Client care

The controversial prospect of publishing law firms’ complaints records will be put firmly back on the agenda with a consultation by the Legal Ombudsman, Legal Futures can report.

More than £5 million has been paid by solicitors to former miners, with much more to come, it emerged today. Nearly 100,000 people have made or will make complaints about deductions wrongly made from the damages received by miners from government compensation schemes.

The performance of the Legal Complaints Service (LCS) will provide a solid foundation from which the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) can build, the Legal Services Ombudsman said today.

Complaints against conveyancers are on the rise, but complaints against personal injury lawyers have fallen dramatically, figures from the Legal Complaints Service have shown.

Later this year, the Legal Ombudsman will take over the handling of complaints against all lawyers. But as chief ombudsman Adam Sampson explains to Legal Futures Editor Neil Rose, it is as much about helping lawyers as clients.

All lawyers will have to give clients clear information about how to complain, and their regulators will have to monitor that it is done, the Legal Services Board has announced.

There have been various articles in the legal press recently stating that conveyancing services can only ever be judged on price. Now, I know that this is certainly not the case. I know many solicitors that still charge an incredibly reasonable fee for their services, yet I also come across many others that are constantly lowering their price simply to secure the instructions.

Paul Gilbert, chief executive of LBC Wise Counsel, argues that lawyers have been sucked into feeling the need to exceed expectations, when all clients want is for them to meet expectations. In fact, exceeding them could be bad for business.

A row is brewing between the Law Society and Legal Services Board over the wind-down of the Legal Complaints Service, Legal Futures can reveal. Law Society chief executive Des Hudson has told us that the LSB’s insistence that the LCS’s current performance targets stay in place as it heads towards closure, despite dwindling staff, is “unthoughtful and an error of judgement”.

No claimant personal injury (PI) law firm will exist in five years’ time if it does not have 20-30 fee-earners, a leading PI practitioner predicted last week. Richard Langton, managing partner in the Birmingham office of Russell Jones & Walker, said this would enable firms to open from at least eight in the morning to eight in the evening, and perhaps on Saturdays too.

The Provision of Services Regulations contain provisions as to the information which lawyers must give to clients and customers. Duncan Finlyson of Lawyers Defence Group outlines their implications

A solicitor has good reason to terminate a retainer if a client insists on putting forward a case and instructing counsel to advance contentions that they do not consider properly arguable, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

The Law Society has clarified to what extent solicitors should tell clients certain details about their professional indemnity insurance.

Insurance mediation does not sound like the kind of thing solicitors do, but in fact many are involved in it and their knowledge of the rules around it are often sketchy. Alan Bannister of Vizards Wyeth outlines the main issues.