At a recent event a solicitor asked me to sum up what the majority of the Legal Complaints Service’s work involves. My response was surprisingly simple. The problems cited most often by clients are: ‘The matter took too long and cost more than I expected.’

Problems usually arise when there is a breakdown in communication between client and solicitor, but with good client care practices these complaints can actually be the easiest to avoid. In an economic climate where looking after existing clients has never been more important, it is an oversight which few can afford to ignore.

The recent Legal Complaints Service Award for Excellence in Client Service, presented as part of this year’s Law Society Excellence Awards, gave us a chance to see how best practice can be applied across the profession. When picking a shortlist for the award we saw evidence that principles of good client care are already part and parcel of everyday practice across the profession.

The winner of our award, PJH Law, is an excellent illustration of how smaller firms can exploit a niche practice to its full potential without spending a fortune. The six-partner employment firm concentrated on developing its client care in two areas. It adopted a set of values stating a commitment to fair billing, including: agreed bills in advance; no voicemail; concise client letters without jargon; and encouraging client feedback. PJH also concentrated on technological innovations such as giving clients access to online billing, a daily employment law blog and other online help tools. These innovations certainly appeal to clients, with the firm reporting that referrals account for the vast majority of new work, including a Premier League football club.

Underpinning PJH’s success is the desire to make sure the client has the service they want, when they want it, and putting the mechanisms in place to deal with those needs. If the business is set up to deal with clients as they want, the likelihood of communication breakdown diminishes greatly.

Size doesn’t matterDuring our judging process, we saw other examples of how the profession is keeping pace with changing client demands. This included training staff in British Sign Language, investing in better car-parking facilities for clients, internal awards for excellent client service and developing an online legislation tracker. But can larger firms, facing a different set of problems, transform their business simply through client care?

One of the shortlisted firms with 200 staff provided proof that they can. Fox Williams was aware that it had to make sure the interests of staff, partners and clients remained aligned. To achieve this it produced a set of behaviours and service standards for staff to follow. This gave staff a detailed manual of which behaviours were conducive to giving excellent client service, and which behaviours were not. The guides empowered staff to challenge any negative behaviour that may compromise client care, but crucially they also helped the client by explaining from the outset what level of service they could expect.

By harnessing the desire of the profession to give outstanding client care and creating an environment where they can deliver it, both firms now receive a wealth of unsolicited positive feedback from clients.

At the LCS we applaud solicitors and firms who are driving the standard of client care ever higher. I was fortunate enough to see some examples of firms who had already come up with some innovative answers to the two most common complaints we hear. But it could be argued that it is the change in the mindset of the solicitor, putting client needs at the heart of everything, which is the most significant. The changes themselves do not necessarily have to be painful for the solicitor. In fact, as we have seen, they can often be incredibly simple and of huge benefit to all parties.

Deborah Evans is chief executive of the Legal Complaints Service