With the debate over the cost of dealing with complaints back in the spotlight, Janet Paraskeva advocates punishing those firms that spark problems


As I write, the solicitors’ profession awaits the publication of Sir David Clementi’s review of regulation – a report that will include recommendations for the future of complaints handling. His proposals will come at a time when all solicitors have to pay significant sums of money to deal with the problems triggered by the small number of practitioners who cause the 17,000-odd complaints a year that are handled by the Law Society’s Consumer Complaints Service.



Every year for the past four years there has been an increase in the practising certificate fee. That increase has always included money for complaints handling. Spending on consumer complaints is projected to increase by 70% from 2003-05.



Why, some members of the profession ask, do we have to run a Consumer Complaints Service? Why, others ask, does it cost as much as it does? And why is the cost going to rise still further?



Paraskeva: more resources


Let us look at each of those three questions. Why is it necessary to give redress to consumers who have had poor service from solicitors? Every year, we receive more than 17,000 complaints – not about 17,000 different firms but about 6,700. The complaints are about poor service, rudeness, failure to answer correspondence and over-charging. The Law Society’s complaints service has always attracted attention from the media and when the system was in chaos five years ago, it brought the Society into disrepute. The chaos was the result of a failure by the then Law Society Council to resource its complaint handling teams adequately to keep up with demand. Staff were demoralised and turnover was high so complaints took a long time to handle.


But all that is history. The year-on-year improvements in our complaints handling have included changing and tightening our procedures, rewriting our information for the public, upgrading our IT systems and improving training for staff. We now have dedicated teams of caseworkers who try, in the first instance, to conciliate complaints between solicitors and customers, implementing more formal approaches only when conciliation has failed.



New systems, new people and more training cost money – but it is money well spent on behalf of the profession. Serious backlogs are a thing of the past, turnaround times are better than almost all comparable complaints handlers in any profession, and telephone handling times in our customer assistance unit – the frontline desks – exceed normal standards.



So why does it cost so much? It costs because many solicitors are slow in responding to caseworkers’ requests for their involvement in the resolution of a case. It costs because achieving the high targets set for complaints handling – originally agreed in discussion with the then Lord Chancellor’s Department and the Legal Services Ombudsman – requires high levels of staffing. But if we are doing so well, you might ask, why is it going to cost even more? The answer is that despite the fact that our Consumer Complaints Service is a success story in the making, in October 2003 Lord Falconer decided to exercise the reserve powers in the Access to Justice Act 1999 to appoint a Legal Services Complaints Commissioner.



The commissioner requires the Law Society to establish a complaints-handling plan with even more stringent targets. If those targets are not met, the commissioner has been given the power to fine the Society. To meet even higher targets we need more resources – not just more people, but more refined technology, more desk space, more management time to ensure quality and consistency, and audit teams to check that it is all going to plan. And solicitors also have to pay through the practising certificate fee for the commissioner’s running costs, including her 16 new staff. When there is an audit team of 16 scrutinising every process, we also need a team of people simply to deal with its demands (aside from handling complaints) and that costs money too.



So will it go on costing more and more? For several years, the Law Society has sought from government increased powers so that the costs of complaints could be recharged to those individuals and firms that cause problems in the first place. But these powers have never been granted. If Sir David Clementi recommends a different form of governance and different arrangements for the handling of complaints, perhaps in that legislation it will be possible to introduce such powers. Then at least, in the long term, the cost of complaints handling to the profession as a whole will come down. Instead, the costs will be borne primarily by those firms that cause problems. This provision is needed even if the Law Society is no longer the body handling complaints.



The cost of our core regulatory processes would of course be unaffected by those powers. The continuation of professional-led regulation of entry to the profession, setting standards, monitoring those standards, of education and training, and of practice and handling the investigation of poor conduct will continue to demand investment from the profession.



We hope that Sir David and the government accept that those functions should continue to be led by the profession, for that is how regulation is most effectively carried out – led by a profession that takes responsibility for its own standards, quality and reputation, working in close partnership with the public it exists to serve.



Janet Paraskeva is the Law Society chief executive