Complaining
about a Legal Executive
If
you would like to complain about a legal executive, you should first
raise your complaint with them. We recommend that you complain in writing,
If you don't receive a detailed reply from your legal executive within
a reasonable time (we suggest 28 days) or you are not happy with the
legal executive's response you may complain to the Institute of Legal
Executives within six months of the end of the work which the legal
executive did for you, or within six months of the legal executive's
final response to your complaint, whichever is later.
Institute
of Legal Executives
The Institute of Legal Executives
(ILEX) is the professional body which represents Legal Executives and
trainee Legal Executives. ILEX can take disciplinary action against
members who breach the Code of Conduct or its rules, or whose behaviour
is unbefitting to membership of ILEX. ILEX has the power to :
-
exclude
a person from membership
-
warn,
reprimand or admonish a member
-
In
addition a member can be ordered to pay a
fine up to £3000 compensation to the complain
If you are
not happy with the service the ILEX provided or you are not happy with
the outcome of your case you can ask the Legal Services Ombudsman to
review your case. You
will need to contact the LSO within three months of the ILEX final response
to your complaint.
Legal
Services Ombudsman
The
Legal Services Ombudsman oversees the handling of complaints about legal
executive in England and Wales. The LSO will investigate the way that
your complaint was dealt with by the ILEX. The LSO can widen their investigation
to include your original complaint to the ILEX. However, the LSO's role
is not to look at every case as if it were an appeal against the decision
of the ILEX. If the LSO believes that a complaint has not been investigated
properly, they will probably recommend that the ILEX looks at the matter
again. What the Ombudsman will do is check that all your complaints
were addressed and that this was done within a reasonable time. They
will want to be satisfied that the ILEX reached a reasonable decision,
and they will also look at any other complaints you might have about
the professional body.
You can’t
appeal against the Legal Services Ombudsman’s decision, your case
can only be re-opened in exceptional circumstances. These circumstances
could include where there was a fundamental mistake in the case or some
important information was missing, and this throws doubt on the Ombudsman’s
final decision. However the LSO's decision is open to judicial review.
This involves making an application to the court,
