Handling Complaint

What is a handling complaint?

A handling complaint is a complaint about how a professional organisation, such as the Law Society of Scotland or the Faculty of Advocates, dealt with a conduct complaint.

What are the time limits?
Handling complaints must be made within 6 months of the date the professional organisation sent you its final decision letter on its investigation of the conduct complaint. Otherwise the law says we cannot consider your complaint.

Has the professional organisation sent you its decision yet?

If the conduct complaint is still being investigated by the professional organisation, we cannot usually carry out a handling investigation. The only 2 exceptions to this are if the professional organisation;

• has unreasonably failed to start to investigate
• has failed to complete an investigation within a reasonable time

If you haven’t received a decision letter yet please email us before you complete the on-line form. Tell us the date the complaint was made and about the most recent communication you’ve had with the professional organisation.

How to make a complaint

Complete the on-line handling complaint form.

You don’t need to send us any other documents at this stage. We will ask for more information if we need it once your complaint has been received and processed.

Information you’ll need

You will need to be able to tell us the date of the professional organisations decision letter. We also need a brief description of why you are unhappy with how the complaint has been dealt with and how it has affected you.