Client care

Customer experience will largely define the success of legal providers in the post Legal Services Act world, according to a survey of delegates at last week’s Legal Futures Conference. Understading the client is vital but doing it will be difficult for some firms, the survey found.

Frontline regulators are letting down consumers by failing to collect information on how lawyers are handling complaints, a review by the Legal Services Board has concluded. This would make it difficult for them “to identify systemic issues and adopt a targeted approach to regulation”.

Consumers believe that a lawyer who has provided a bad service should be “named and shamed”, research released today has found. However, there are signs that consumers are likely to use published information “in a way that may be at odds with the Legal Ombudsman’s reasons for publication”.

Some 342 law firms have applied to join the Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS) since it opened last month, the Law Society has revealed to Legal Futures. A spokesman said the number is growing rapidly, with around 20 new applications a day at the moment.

The obligation on barristers to notify clients of their right to complain to the Legal Ombudsman is more a marketing opportunity than a burden, the Legal Services Board has said. Meanwhile, the LSB reaffirmed that its policy on providing complaints information at the time of engagement will stand, despite a number of concerns raised by the Bar Standards Board.

The Legal Ombudsman service has issued its first formal decision, it has emerged. The first case to go all the way through to a final decision by an ombudsman concerned a complaint over delay and whether the costs were explained clearly.

Nearly half of solicitors are impossible to get hold of after 5pm, a poll of 2,000 clients has found. The survey of consumers who had recently used a solicitor, carried out by solicitors’ network Contact Law, found that 47% considered it impossible, while 15% said they could rarely reach their lawyer after 5pm. Just 38% said their legal adviser could be easily contacted after that time.

Lawyers have warned the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) that some clients will end up unrepresented if he adopts a complaints process that involves ‘naming and shaming’. Fear of reputational damage would have a chilling effect on taking on clients perceived to be ‘risky’ and adversely impact on lawyers whose social conscience led them to offer help, they said.

The Legal Ombudsman service needs to work out the limits of its jurisdiction “and quickly”, as new business models emerge, chief ombudsman Adam Sampson has said. Mr Sampson said that with the pace of legal services reform accelerating and the legal services market “rapidly moving away from a reliance on the high street solicitor” and towards new providers entering the market “with very different business models”, it is very important to consumers that LeO is clear about what is and is not within its jurisdiction.

The new Legal Ombudsman (LeO) service is set to turn away the rash of complaints about the way certain law firms have been pursuing alleged filesharers, it has emerged. However, it is instead referring them on to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) received 497 calls on its first day, with the first complaints about a solicitor who missed a court date after going on holiday and not telling his client. Many of the complaints were rejected for various reasons, such as being out of time, but 22 investigations were opened on the first day, and 14 are awaiting allocation.

Barristers need some carve-outs from the requirements to tell clients about their complaints procedure, the Legal Services Board is to be told. The Bar Standards Board suggests that the drafters did not understand the realities of barristers’ practice.

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) today reopened the debate about whether the details of complaints against lawyers should be published, including their names, with a strong endorsement from the Legal Services Consumer Panel that they should. In a discussion paper that seeks views on how it should approach the publication of complaints data, LeO says a naming policy could benefit consumers and lawyers, but that there could be unintended negative consequences too.

Lawyers will have a maximum of eight weeks to resolve complaints before the Legal Ombudsman will agree to investigate, the new service has confirmed, but it may ask them why they did not deal with them even quicker.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has been forced “under duress” to approve a rule change under which solicitors will have to inform existing clients of their right to complain to the Legal Ombudsman, despite efforts to persuade the Legal Services Board to change its position.