About Us
Barristers in chambers provide advice and representation in their chosen fields, and practise in the civil courts of England & Wales. In civil cases Counsel will very often
• build up with you a bundle of documents about the case, in date order
• Consider the bundle of documents and provide an initial advice
• Depending on the advice and your instructions, prepare further documents and appear
at Court hearings about the case, including the Trial.
Contact Us
The following are invited to contact Caroline Prior, Clerk to Chambers, using the contact box provided or by telephoning 0208-940-9988
• Solicitors or other practising lawyers;
• Licensed Access clients, who may either hold a licence issued by the Bar Standards
Board, or be a member of a professional body which has been recognised by the Bar Standards Board; and
• Members of the public who wish to instruct a barrister under the Public Access
scheme.
Caroline will provide you with a quotation in the form of a draft Client Care letter which will set out the work to be done, the fee to be charged and other details. She will do this as soon as possible. If you receive a quotation like this and there is something you do not understand, please contact her.
Fees
Wherever possible Counsel will charge a fixed fee, based on the amount of work involved and the complexity of the case. If this is not possible, Counsel will perform the work required and charge £250 per hour for work done. To keep things simple and clear, we do not ask to be paid extra for travel, hotels etc as these costs are included in the agreed fee.
In some cases, Counsel also accept instructions under conditional fee agreements (“no win, no fee” agreements). For information, please contact Caroline Prior.
Timescales
Once a bundle of documents is available, and the Client Care Letter signed, a date will be noted in the Selwyn diary on which the initial advice will be provided. Where litigation is in progress, the timescale for a case may vary depending on factors such as barristers’ availability, the type and complexity of the case, the other side’s approach and court waiting times.
Public Access
If you are a member of the public, the Bar Standards Board’s Public Access Guidance for Lay Clients is available here
https://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/resources/resource-library/public-access-guidance-for-lay-clients.html
This will help you to understand how the Public Access scheme works, and explains how you can use it to instruct barristers directly.
Regulatory and Complaints Information
Barristers in chambers are regulated by the Bar Standards Board. You can search the Barristers’ Register on the Bar Standards Board’s website:
This shows
(1) whether a barrister has a current practising certificate, and
(2) whether a barrister has any disciplinary findings, which are published on the Bar Standards Board’s website in accordance with their policy.
https://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/for-the-public/search-a-barristers-record.html
Alternatively, you can contact the Bar Standards Board on 020 7611 1444 to ask about this (or e-mail ContactUs@BarStandardsBoard.org.uk).
Our complaints procedure;
Our aim is to give all our clients a good service at all times. However, if you have a complaint please let us know as soon as possible, by telephone or in writing. We will treat your complaint as confidential although we may discuss it with other barristers or officials from the Bar Standards Board as part of their monitoring functions. We will not reveal your name to others unless we appoint an independent person to investigate a complaint or set up mediation. We will deal with your complaint promptly.
Please note that the Legal Ombudsman, the independent complaints body for service complaints about lawyers, has time limits in which a complaint must be raised with them. From 1 April 2023, the time limits are:
a) The complainant must refer the complaint to the Legal Ombudsman no later than one year from the act/omission, or one year from when the complainant should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint.
b) The complainant must also refer the complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of the complaint receiving a final response from their lawyer, if that response complies with the requirements in rule 4.4 of the Scheme Rules (which requires the response to include prominently an explanation that the Legal Ombudsman was available if the complainant remained dissatisfied, and the provision of full contact details for the Ombudsman and a warning that the complaint must be referred to them within six months).
- Chambers must have regard to that timeframe when deciding whether they are able to investigate your complaint. Chambers will not therefore usually deal with complaints that fall outside of the Legal Ombudsman’s time limits. The Ombudsman can extend the time limit if it considers that it is fair and reasonable to do so.
- The Ombudsman will also only deal with complaints from consumers. This means that only complaints from the barrister’s client are within their jurisdiction. Non-clients who are not satisfied with the outcome of the investigation should contact the Bar Standards Board rather than the Legal Ombudsman.
- It should be noted that it may not always be possible to investigate a complaint brought by a non-client. This is because ourability to satisfactorily investigate and resolve such matters is limited and complaints of this nature are often better suited to the disciplinary processes maintained by the Bar Standards Board. Therefore, we will make an initial assessment of the complaint and if we feel that the issues raised cannot be satisfactorily resolved through ourcomplaints process we will refer you to the Bar Standards Board.
Complaints made by telephone
- If you wish to make a complaint by telephone, We will make a note of the details of your complaint and what you would like done about it.We I will endeavour to resolve matters with you on the telephone. If after discussion you are satisfied with the outcome we will make a note of the outcome and the fact that you are satisfied. If you are not satisfied you may wish to make a written complaint.
Complaints made in writing
- If you wish to make a written complaint please give me the following details:
• Your name, telephone number and address;
• The detail of your complaint; and
• What you would like done about it.
Procedure for dealing with your complaint
- There are a number of ways in which your complaint may be dealt with:
(a) Discussion over the telephone;
(b) Dealt with by correspondence;
(c) Discussion at a meeting between us;
(d) The appointment of an independent person to investigate the complaint.
- If we decide to appoint an independent person to investigate the complaint (for example, a barrister in another chambers), we both would need to agree who to appoint. An independent person who has considerable experience in the area that is the subject matter of the dispute should be chosen.
- Upon receipt of a written complaint we will:
(a) Reply in writing, normally within 48 hours, to acknowledge the complaint and inform you how we shall be dealing with it.
(b) Reply within 14 days responding in full to your complaint. We will offer you the opportunity to meet with you if that is appropriate. If we find later that we am not going to be able to reply within 14 days we will set a new date for our reply and inform you. Our reply will set out:
• The nature and scope of ourinvestigation;
• Our conclusion on each complaint and the basis for ourconclusion; and
• If we find that you are justified in your complaint, ourproposals for resolving the complaint.
- If you are not happy with our final written response and you fall within their jurisdiction, you may make a formal complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, the independent complaints handling body for complaints about lawyers. Please note the timeframe for referral of complaints to the Ombudsman as set out at paragraph 2 above. Those clients who are able to complain to the Legal Ombudsman are as follows:
a) Individuals;
b) Businesses or enterprises that are micro-enterprises within the meaning of Article 1 and Article 2(1) and (3) of the Annex to Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC (broadly businesses or enterprises with fewer than 10 employees and turnover or assets not exceeding €2 million);
c) Charities with an annual income net of tax of less than £1 million;
d) Clubs, associations or organisations, the affairs of which are managed by its members or a committee of its members, with an annual income net of tax of less than £1 million;
e) Trustees of trusts with an asset value of less than £1 million; and
f) Personal representatives or beneficiaries of the estates of persons who, before they died, had not referred the complaint to the Legal Ombudsman.
You can write to the Legal Ombudsman at:
Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167,
Slough, SL1 0EH
Telephone number: 0300 555 0333
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
More information about the Legal Ombudsman is available on their website:
https://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/information-centre/data-centre/ombudsman-decision-data/
If you are unhappy with our final written response, alternative complaints bodies as approved by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute also exist which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services, should we both wish to use such a scheme. If you wish to use an alternative complaint body please contact us to discuss this, including timelines for raising a complaint. Please also note if we use mediation, neither you nor we am required to accept the proposed resolution. If mediation does not resolve the complaint, you may still make a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman (provided you fall within their jurisdiction and you do so within the time limit).
We will retain all correspondence and other documents generated in the course of your complaint for a period of six years and we will review complaints at least once a year to
ensure that we maintain good standards of service.
If you are not our client and are unhappy with the outcome of our investigation then please contact the Bar Standards Board at:
Bar Standards Board
Contact and Assessment Team 289-293 High Holborn
London WC1V 7JZ
Telephone number: 0207 6111 444 Website: www.barstandardsboard.org.uk
We will maintain confidentiality at all times and discuss your complaint only to the extent that is necessary for its resolution and to comply with requests for information from the Bar Standards Board discharging its monitoring functions.