The legal complaints service has been doing its homework and looking at the best consumer redress organisations around, writes Shamit Saggar


It has been all change at the Law Society in the last few weeks with the three arms of the organisation adopting distinctly different personalities.



Indeed, it is only a couple of weeks since the Society’s complaints-handling function adopted a new look and a new name – the Legal Complaints Service (LCS). My board, which oversees the work of the LCS, will, at least for a short while, be known as the board for the Legal Complaints Service.



But what’s in a name and an eye-catching logo? These days some organisations spend considerable sums on rebranding exercises (although rest assured we have not), while seeming to forget about defining their central message.



For us, the message has always been far more important than the image. Indeed, given that there is only around three years to the creation of the proposed office for legal complaints (OLC), we thought long and hard about embarking on a name change at all.



At the end of October, the then Consumer Complaints Board held its autumn workshop at London’s British Academy. Around 50 of our key stakeholders attended the event, which brought a culmination to several months of stakeholder consultation.



Throughout the early part of 2006, members of my board met with representatives of other organisations likely to be affected by the proposed OLC, as well as with consumer organisations such as Which? and the National Consumer Council.



Relationships were also forged at the highest level with the Department for Constitutional Affairs as we sought to inform its thinking about legal consumer redress.



The key aim of the day was to find out what people were looking for from a top-class consumer redress organisation. Independence, accessibility, fairness and quality were the major themes to emerge from the event. We have taken these messages forward to inform the LCS improvement agenda, which will be launched in the spring.



After analysing all of the feedback gathered over the past year, it has become clear that there are several areas that we need to address. Customers need to have a clear understanding of the service they should expect from a solicitor at the outset of their contact with the profession. Both the LCS and the firm should provide this. The options available to customers should also be made clear as they progress through the complaints procedure with the LCS.



A realistic indication of how long the complaints process will take should be provided to the customer at the earliest opportunity. There should be clear and transparent procedures in place to demonstrate that the LCS is even-handed in its contact with both customers and solicitors. However, it is important to recognise that some customers require particular guidance and support.



The LCS needs to concentrate on the quality of the service that customers receive. We also need clearly to demonstrate the independence of the organisation.



The LCS needs to nurture best practice in complaints-handling within the profession and to work whenever required with individual firms to improve their complaints-handling procedures. This prevention agenda will be a positive step towards reducing the number of complaints that reach our offices.



These are only first steps in building stronger relationships with our customers and members of the profession. It is our stated aim to continue to develop and improve our service throughout the transitional period until the establishment

of the OLC.



Our improvement agenda, which will take the LCS through the next three years, will clarify the role of the organisation, outline our prevention agenda to the profession, review our own internal organisational structure and detail how we aim to work with the profession going forward.



Visit the LSC’s new website (at www.legalcomplaints.org.uk) to find out more about how the service as an independent and impartial body will work with solicitors to resolve any issues quickly and efficiently.



***



The last few weeks have seen much media comment about the future shape of the proposed OLC. The Gazette itself set the ball rolling with an article that reported a joint letter sent to peers by the Law Society and the Bar Council (see [2007] Gazette,
11 January, 4
).


Part of that letter stated that the Law Society would be ‘content’ to back the bar’s call for the Legal Services Bill to contain a power allowing the OLC to delegate the handling of service complaints back to the approved regulators.



I wish to state clearly that this is not the view of either my board or of the current legal redress handler, namely the LCS.



Legal services reform should be kept simple and not over-complicated.



I have yet to hear a credible argument to back what has been proposed by the Bar Council and apparently endorsed by the Law Society. Indeed, there have been no genuinely credible interventions in support of the bar’s position among a wide cross-section of stakeholders other than from a small minority of highly vocal and partisan peers.



Shamit Saggar is the chairman of the board of the Legal Complaints Service