Working example, built for Pellys

The acknowledgment a client never gets until they've already called back

A Trustpilot reviewer, CTI, wrote that after "hundreds of calls, emails" they "just haven't bothered" to call back. Another reviewer, Michaela Mensah Kayla, was told a matter "should be sorted real soon" and then couldn't reach anyone. Neither is describing a matter that moved slowly, they're describing silence: nothing telling them their message had even been received, let alone when to expect a reply. That is the exact complaint type the UK Legal Ombudsman upheld against Pellys Solicitors Limited: "Failure to respond."

What's real: the UK Legal Ombudsman's own published decision data lists one upheld decision against Pellys Solicitors Limited, decision ID D011783, decided 15/08/2025, area "Wills and Probate," complaint type recorded as "Failure to respond," Evidence of Poor Service: Yes. Six Trustpilot reviews (uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.pellys.co.uk, 3.9/5 from 28 reviews) spanning November 2023 to November 2025 describe the same pattern beyond the two quoted above: Mark Nicholson ("over a month of no replies to emails"), Alan Watson ("communication and liaison was non existent"), Pat ("lack of communication and delays"), and Natalie ("painfully slow"). A direct review of pellys.co.uk found no client portal, case-status login, or tracking system anywhere on the site, only phone numbers, a contact form, and a general inbox address. Nationally marketed UK legal-tech products, Clio's Client Portal and InfoTrack's Digital Conveyancing Portal among them, already sell exactly this kind of automatic acknowledgment and status visibility to solicitors' firms today, including specifically for conveyancing work.

What's illustrative: the matters, client names, and inbox messages below are a fictional sample, not real Pellys clients, matters, or correspondence. Nothing here sends a real email or text. This shows exactly what a client, and anyone else on the matter, would receive automatically the moment their matter moves or the moment their message lands in the inbox. A real build connects to whatever field a fee earner already updates and to the info@pellys.co.uk inbox itself, sending through an actual email service.

Fee earner view: update a matter's status

Sample matters, fictional

What the client (and anyone else on the matter) sees

General inbox: every message gets an automatic acknowledgment

Sample inbox, fictional

This is the direct answer to the Ombudsman's "Failure to respond" finding: a message to info@pellys.co.uk gets an immediate, automatic acknowledgment naming a specific date to expect a reply, instead of silence. Try it below.

What I'd flag before you roll this out anywhere else

Nothing here sends a real email or text. This demo only shows what a client would receive. A real version needs an actual email service (for example SendGrid or Postmark) wired to both the info@pellys.co.uk inbox and to whatever field your fee earners already update to mark a matter's stage.
This introduces acknowledgment and visibility your site doesn't have today, it doesn't sit beside an existing tool. Direct review of pellys.co.uk found no client portal, case-status login, or CRM-facing feature of any kind, so this closes the exact gap the Ombudsman decision and the Trustpilot reviews describe rather than adding a second way to check status.
The milestone stages shown for a conveyancing matter and for a wills/probate matter are typical stages for that kind of work, not copied from Pellys' internal case-management process. A real build should confirm the exact stages your team already tracks, the field they update to move a matter between them, and a reply-by window your team can actually hit before it's promised automatically.
Worth a specific conversation before this goes live: what an acknowledgment or status update can safely say. Since this touches active legal matters, a real build should keep the message content to a status label, a reference number, and a plain next step, as shown below, not matter substance, so nothing privileged or confidential goes out over an unencrypted channel.
The Ombudsman decision and Trustpilot reviews above are real and cited directly, this is a reasonable response to the documented pattern, not a guarantee nothing is ever delayed. A Grant of Probate or a property search can still take time to come back. What changes is whether the client hears something automatically the moment they make contact and at each real step after, instead of finding out only by calling back, or not at all.