New government client care regulations ‘excessive’
New government regulations requiring solicitors to inform clients about what professional indemnity insurance they have in place have been described as ‘excessive’.
The Provision of Services Regulations 2009, introduced by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) in December, require lawyers to provide information on their services over and above the existing professional obligations set out in the solicitors’ code of conduct.
The new requirements include telling clients what professional indemnity insurance the firm has in place, and informing them of ‘non-judicial means of dispute settlement’ – namely, the roles of the Legal Complaints Service or the Office for Legal Complaints.
Steve Meredith, a private client partner in Welsh firm Gabb & Co, said the ‘excessive’ new requirements made a bad situation worse.
‘We already have to give too much information in client care letters. No client can understand or want to read 15 pages of terms and conditions, which encourages bad solicitors to hide the nasty stuff on page 13.’
He added: ‘The key issue for clients is how much it’s going to cost. The regulations should weed out the solicitors who do the job slowly and badly. The rest of us should be allowed to loosen up. The ideal length of a client letter is one page or two pages maximum.’
Guidance published by BIS said the new regulations transposed the EU services directive into UK legislation, further opening up the internal EU market to UK service providers. BIS estimates output in the UK will increase by £4bn-6bn per year in terms of employment opportunities and trade.
Comments
client care
The only way you can regulate your relationship with your client is the client care, sadly the one page letter is not enough and separate terms are needed. Each signs a declaration that they have, read and understood, accepted the terms and even goes so far in saying that they have taken advice on the terms or not. If you are running a business then the simple client care does not assist you when things go wrong. I am not talking about when the solicitor has messed things up, I am talking about the client who causes problems for no reason or reasons which are unfounded. I don;t see what the fuss is about, we already have this information on the website and our terms.
There has to be some
There has to be some legitimate reason for this to have come about. This is no different to the
Government Law whereby the media is allowed access into Family Law Courts obviously to
stop the secretive behind closed door abuses from going on