In all the speculation about the consequences of a new government and its approach to managing the nation’s budget deficit, we all anticipated a period of review and reflection. Some of the certainties of the previous regime will be questioned and many of its plans may be assessed to have been mere dreams. And there was a small danger that this period of bureaucratic navel-gazing and inaction might cost the legal profession dear.

For, amid the growing pile of unremarked legislation awaiting parliamentary time is the commencement order for the new Legal Ombudsman. Planned to go live on 6 October, the new organisation will not only replace the existing Legal Services Ombudsman, but also the Legal Complaints Service. It will sweep away the existing methods of handling service complaints for the entire legal profession – unlike the LCS, the new organisation can also take complaints about legal executives, licensed conveyancers, barristers, patent attorneys and so on – and offer a one-stop shop for anyone seeking to make a complaint about a lawyer.

The new scheme is not just a change of name. It acts as a harbinger for a very different approach to complaints handing. For a start, it is an ombudsman scheme, a lay organisation taking a defiantly non-legal approach to the investigation of complaints. The emphasis of the new arrangements will be on speed and informality, with an ambition of settling complaints by agreement rather than quasi-judicial process. Of course, if agreed resolution is not possible, one of the team of eight ombudsmen will make a decision – a decision which, once accepted by the complainant, is legally binding on both sides. However, that decision will not be based on legal precedent or regulation, but on a judgement based on fairness and the adequacy of the service provided.

Its powers and expectations are also very different. The new ombudsman scheme certainly has teeth – it can order up to £30,000 redress and has a statutory power to compel cooperation. But it will eschew simple judgements of right and wrong, preferring instead to seek to understand whether the level of service provided was adequate, and looking not to punish but merely to put customers who have had inadequate service back in the position they should have been. It will also examine how the law firm handled the initial complaint when it was first raised with them.

The emphasis it places on this is partly responsible for the new push on the part of the Law Society and Legal Services Board on first-tier complaints handling, with solicitors under a new duty to resolve complaints within an eight-week period and signpost complainants to the Legal Ombudsman rather than the LCS. This new obligation, which will need to be acted on by firms quickly to ensure that the new scheme gets off to the best possible start, will be the most obvious impact of the change on solicitors.

Inevitably, there will also be a financial impact. The new service is paid for by the profession itself via a combination of a levy (collected through the practising certificate) and a £400 case fee charged for each complaint accepted for investigation. The latter cost, however, will only be incurred when a firm has had at least two complaints in the previous 12 months, a deliberate attempt on the part of the Legal Ombudsman to soften the impact on small firms and sole practitioners.

For once, however, this represents good rather than bad financial news. One of the huge advantages of the new arrangements is that they are cheaper than the old ones – the new scheme will cost only £20m a year to run instead of the £30m which the Law Society pays for the LCS, which cannot begin the process of shutting down until the new ombudsman starts work.

Two months after the election, much of the government machine is still at a standstill as ministers consider how many of their predecessors’ policies should survive in the new world. Our future is more assured – we have received formal confirmation that the new scheme will prove an exception to the general picture of cuts and stasis, and we are on track to launch, as intended, on 6 October.

Solicitors should certainly hope that we do. Political intrigue may make good theatre. But the price to the profession of any extended run would be high indeed.

Adam Sampson is chief legal ombudsman for the new complaints-handling scheme