London

Complaints Procedure

1. Please send your complaint in writing to contact-uk@sidley.com.
2. We will send you an acknowledgment of your complaint within three working days of receiving it.
3. We will review your complaint and may invite you to discuss your complaint with us.
4. Once we have reviewed your complaint, we will write to you with our response, including any resolutions that have been agreed with you. Depending on the nature of your complaint, we will endeavour to provide our response within 30 days of our acknowledgement of your complaint.
5. If we have not responded within 8 weeks, or if you are still not satisfied after receiving our final written response, and your complaint relates to our invoices or the legal services we provided to you, you may be able to raise your complaint with the Legal Ombudsman (www.legalombudsman.org.uk). The Legal Ombudsman deals with complaints from individuals and from small businesses, charities and associations.
6. You have six months to submit your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman after receiving our final written response to your complaint. In the unlikely scenario of not receiving a response from us your complaint must be brought to the Legal Ombudsman within one year of the problem happening or one year from when you found out about it. The contact details for the Legal Ombudsman are: tel. 0300 555 0333 / enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk.
7. If your complaint relates to our professional behaviour, and you feel we have not sufficiently addressed your concerns in our final written response, you can raise a complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, our professional regulator. Please see its website for details (www.sra.org).

We can only provide investment services if they are an incidental part of the legal services we have been engaged to provide.

We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). However, we are included on the register maintained by the FCA so that we can carry on insurance distribution activity, which is broadly the advising on, selling and administration of insurance contracts. This part of our business, including arrangements for complaints or redress if something goes wrong, is regulated by the Solicitors' Regulation Authority. The register can be accessed via the FCA website.

Sidley Austin LLP act as legal advisers; it is not part of our role to give advice on the merits of investment transactions. Any investment decision is for our clients to make and no communication by us should be treated as an invitation or inducement to our clients to engage in investment activity.

Our Business and Supply Chains

At Sidley, we strive to build and retain the best possible personnel and supply chains to support and help grow our business.

Given the nature of our business and our relatively limited supply chains, we consider the risk of slavery or human trafficking occurring in our business or supply chain to be low.

Our supply chain primarily comprises providers of goods and services, such as stationery and office equipment, that allow our personnel to provide legal advice to our clients. We also work with other sophisticated suppliers of legal services, including law firms in other jurisdictions and barristers.

Our Policies

We expect every member of the Sidley team to act in a manner which promotes the development of a workplace which is free from discrimination or harassment of any kind and which complies with all applicable laws. Our policies reflect that expectation.

It is also our policy to engage with our supply chain to confirm that our suppliers are adhering to the same high standards. In particular, key suppliers must provide details of the corporate and social responsibility policies they have in place, including in respect of issues covered by the UK Modern Slavery Act.

With regard to Sidley personnel, our policy is to provide appropriate and relevant training. In particular, training will be provided for those with procurement responsibilities, so that they are able to assess the risks of modern slavery and human trafficking in our business and supply chains.

This statement, and the steps taken by Sidley Austin LLP to ensure that our business and supply chains are free from slavery and human trafficking and to ensure that we remain in compliance with the Act, are reviewed regularly and updated as necessary.

This statement has been approved by the London partnership, represented by Thomas Thesing, the Managing Partner for the London office of Sidley Austin LLP.

This statement has been reviewed in consideration of Sidley’s activities and business for the previous financial year by Rachpal Thind, Compliance Officer for Legal Practice for the London office of Sidley Austin LLP.

For a signed copy of this statement, relating to the previous financial year please click here.