Just call me Nostradamus, because I can tell you exactly how the next few weeks will go with regard to the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s latest wheeze on complaints.
The regulator has proposed, with customary lack of any evidential basis, that law firms should tell clients at the end of their matter that they can complain if they’re not happy. Apparently it’s not enough that, at the moment, firms have to tell people about the complaint options when they are instructed.
Where does this end? Will firms eventually have to contact clients on a weekly basis to remind them they can complain? Perhaps AI could be adopted to send out a daily mailshot giving the same information as yesterday (no doubt annoying clients, perhaps to the extent that they complain).
Maybe the SRA should start regulating my local pub, and require that the barman outlines with every pint that I have the right to complain if I’m not happy with it.
Where is the evidence that clients are in the dark about the right to complain, or that being reminded (again) would make any difference? Is the SRA really saying that clients so unhappy with their service that they might raise a complaint are not equally capable of googling ‘making a complaint about a law firm’?
Maybe – and the SRA might want to sit down for this one – clients are not bombarding firms or the ombudsman with complaints because they’re perfectly content with the service they received? The regulator’s own consultation states that client satisfaction reached its highest ever level in 2024, at 87%.
A recent survey of solicitors and firms found that 96% are meeting the requirement to provide information about how to complain in writing at the time of engagement. More than two-thirds (68%) are publishing the information on their website as required. Perhaps firms should take the lead of the SRA itself, which buries the option for ‘complaints about our service’ at the bottom of its website?
Anyhow, we know how this ends. The profession will take the bait (as this column has done) and kick up a fuss. The SRA will produce a withering response, with a slightly sneering tone, stating this reaction is exactly the kind of thing one would expect from a legal sector that refuses to acknowledge it is failing to handle complaints properly. The SRA will push ahead anyway, with a negligible effect on anything. Then in a couple of years or so, the regulator will state that its regime is not working and consult on placing yet more requirements on law firms.
SRA chief executive Paul Philip patronisingly introduced the consultation by urging solicitors not to be afraid of encouraging complaints and to treat them as an opportunity to improve (the irony of this coming from the same people who brought us ‘nothing to see here’ responses to the Axiom Ince debacle was apparently lost).
Solicitors aren’t afraid of complaints. They are – evidentially – happy to tell clients what options are there if they are unhappy. What they do fear is this constant encroachment on their precious time by regulators imposing new requirements based on little proof they make any difference. Clients have every right to complain, but with this kind of mission creep, so do solicitors.
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