Legal Ombudsman

Conveyancers have usurped family lawyers as the main cause of complaints to the Legal Ombudsman, its annual report has revealed. But it also urged lawyers to think twice before pushing for formal decisions rather than accepting informal resolutions to complaints.

The Legal Ombudsman has recruited a team of 30 to deal with the thousands of complaints about claims management companies it will receive from today, it has emerged.

Law firms should issue two separate retainers to clients where they are provided with consumer credit as well as purely legal services, the Legal Ombudsman has suggested.

There is scope for the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) to offer redress to third parties, as long as the complaints involved could be “clearly and tightly defined”, a report by a LeO working party has found.

The first lawyer to be ‘named and shamed’ by the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) for a series of complaints has argued that he is only “trying to adapt to new market forces”.

Ian Brack, formerly chief executive and chief accounting officer of the Olympic Lottery Distributor, has been appointed interim chief executive of the Legal Ombudsman in succession to Adam Sampson after his resignation last month.

The Legal Ombudsman has exercised for the first time its power under the Legal Services Act to name “in the public interest” a lawyer responsible for a series of complaints.

The Chief Legal Ombudsman, Adam Sampson, has resigned from his role after a controversy about travel expenses meant his organisation’s accounts are likely to be qualified by the National Audit Office.

The High Court has ruled that a law firm cannot escape responsibility for handling complaints relating to a sole practice with which it merged. It said that as Kerman & Co had enjoyed the benefit and goodwill of the deal, it also had to accept the burden.

The Legal Ombudsman is set to start receiving complaints about claims management complaints from 28 January 2015 – some two and a half years after the switch from the Claims Management Regulator was first mooted by the government.