New Zealand Law Society - How the complaints process works
The Lawyers Complaints Service (LCS) facilitates the administration of the complaints process by:
The LCS may try to help you and the lawyer, or the law firm, to resolve the complaint where it is appropriate to do so.
Standards Committees
There are 22 Standards Committees based around New Zealand who consider complaints and make decisions on them. Standards Committees are made up of lawyers and lay people from within the community.
After an initial assessment by the LCS, a complaint may be referred to a Standards Committee. The Committee will consider the complaint, check whether the conduct, service or fee concerns are supported by appropriate documentation, and decide whether any disciplinary action is warranted.
You will receive acknowledgment of receipt of your complaint by email or over the phone.
Your complaint and any supporting material will be assessed by the LCS to make sure it meets the requirements to be accepted. The LCS may choose to take no action or no further action on your complaint if any of the following apply:
During the initial assessment, the LCS will also consider whether your complaint can be resolved upfront without it needing to go further. This may involve talking to you about what you consider to be a suitable outcome, contacting the lawyer on your behalf to explain your view and asking whether they would be willing to consider resolving the complaint.
If the LCS decides to take no action or no further action on your complaint, you will be notified.
If your complaint progresses beyond the initial assessment stage, the LCS will contact you if they require further information. Otherwise, you will not hear from the LCS until later in the process.
Whether or not your complaint progresses to a Standards Committee, the LCS will notify the person or firm you complained about and provide them with a copy of the complaint.
If your complaint is progressing to a Standards Committee, the LCS will let the person or firm you have complained about know that they can provide a response to the complaint. They may contact you directly to try and resolve the complaint once they have been notified of it. If it is resolved, you will need to let the LCS know.
When the lawyer, firm or employee, provides a response to your complaint, this will be included with the complaint material when it is considered by a Standards Committee.
If the person or firm you have complained about expresses a willingness to resolve the complaint with you as part of their response, the LCS will consider whether this is appropriate and contact you.
If your complaint progresses beyond the initial assessment but is unable to be resolved early, it will be allocated to a Standards Committee for consideration.
Each Standards Committee is able to consider complaints from any area of law and about any conduct, service or fee issue. However, sometimes the type of complaint you have made will determine which Standards Committee it is allocated to. The LCS has Standards Committees which can specifically consider:
You will be contacted if the Standards Committee considering your complaint needs further information from you.
Standards Committees meet at different frequencies. When your complaint is to be considered, the Standards Committee will look at all the information you have provided. It may:
For complaints about fees, see how the Standards Committees assess complaints about fees.
Once a decision has been made on your complaint by a Standards Committee, you will receive a copy of a written decision as soon as practicable. Unless the Standards Committee has decided to refer the matter to the Disciplinary Tribunal, the decision will explain the Standards Committee’s reasons for its conclusions on the key aspects of your complaint.
Standards Committee decisions are confidential to the parties involved.
Neither the lawyer nor the complainant can share the decision of a Standards Committee with anyone else unless the Standards Committee directs it. See possible complaint outcomes.
If you do not agree with the decision of the Standards Committee, you have 30 working days from receiving a copy of the decision to apply for a review to the Legal Complaints Review Officer (LCRO). The LCRO is independent of the LCS and Standards Committees. Find out more about what happens next when the LCRO receives your application.
If you wish to make a complaint about the LCS or have concerns about how your complaint was processed, our complaints handling policy explains how you can do this.
How long does it take?
Timeframes for processing complaints vary depending on the type of conduct complained about, the complexity of the complaint, the amount of material submitted and the process the Standards Committee chooses to follow. The LCS aims to close most complaints within six months.
If you need an update on your complaint, you can contact the LCS on 0800 261 801 or complaints@lawsociety.org.nz
Explaining your complaint in your own words and using our online complaint form usually works best. However, if you do use AI to assist you with making a complaint, please ensure that all the details in the complaint you submit are correct and relevant to your situation. Our ability to help you may be affected if your AI-assisted complaint is too long, complicated or contains irrelevant information.
Please be available for questions and to provide further information, if needed. When additional information is not needed but you’d like to provide extra material, please talk to the LCS about it first as it may cause delays.
The LCS will update you as your complaint moves through the key stages, such as when it is allocated to a Standards Committee, or if further information is needed or a decision has been made. Please also update the LCS if your complaint has been resolved or if you no longer wish to continue with it.
Different stages of the complaint can take different amounts of time so do not worry if you have not heard anything for a while.
Lawyers cannot take action to collect any unpaid fees while a complaint is in progress. However, they may charge interest on any unpaid balances while the complaint is processed.
To avoid interest charges, you may choose to pay the fees in full before the due date. You can still make a complaint after you have paid. If the fees are determined to be unfair or unreasonable, the lawyer may be required to fully or partially refund you.
The LCS cannot suspend a lawyer or stop a lawyer from practising while a complaint against them is in process. The Disciplinary Tribunal can make an interim suspension order, but only after a Standards Committee has determined that the matter should be referred to the Disciplinary Tribunal.
The New Zealand Law Society cannot provide legal advice.
However, the Law Society’s view is that a confidentiality agreement between a lawyer and client cannot prevent the client from making a complaint under the statutory complaint regime to the Law Society in relation to the lawyer’s conduct.
You may wish to discuss the consequences of a confidentiality agreement with an independent lawyer, or if you are a practising lawyer you could discuss it with a member of the National Panel of Friends.
¹Possible reasons why a Standards Committee may decline to accept your complaint:
The complainant doesn't have the necessary authority to make the complaint on someone's behalf.
The Standards Committee doesn’t consider it has the jurisdiction to consider it, i.e., the lawyer they are being asked to consider isn't named by the complainant in the complaint material.
The content here is reviewed annually. While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of the information on our website, there may, on occasion, be minor differences between translated versions. Information here is as up to date as possible but may be subject to change at times.