Paraskeva: maximum 'realistic' The Law Society faces fines of 1% of its total revenue - up to a maximum of £1 million - if its complaints handling is not up to scratch, and not £5 million as floated by the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) in March this year, it was revealed last week.


Under new powers, Zahida Manzoor, the Legal Services Complaints Commissioner (LSCC), will be able to impose the fine if she is not satisfied with the Society's new complaints-handling regime, to be finalised later in the year. She will have the discretion to impose a lower fine if she wishes.



Ms Manzoor said that although she had not pushed for any particular level of fine, the powers granted were appropriate. She said: 'Given the Law Society's income, £1 million is a lot of money that it will have to find if its systems are not up the level they should be.'



She added that it was too early to say whether she would need to make use of the new fining powers available to her, as the targets she will set for the Law Society and other professional bodies will not come into force until next year. She stressed that she was keen to engage in a dialogue with the Society.



She continued: 'The Law Society has given me a very early plan [for the new complaints handling system] and I suspect they will want to do a lot more work on it before submitting a formal plan.'



The new powers, which have been set out by the government in a statutory instrument, will need parliamentary approval before coming into force by October this year.



Law Society chief executive Janet Paraskeva said: 'We are very pleased that the Lord Chancellor has accepted our arguments for a more sensible and realistic maximum fine [than the original £5 million proposal]. However, the reduced limit will not diminish our efforts to avoid a fine being considered in the first place.'



A DCA spokeswoman said the government had lowered the maximum fine as a result of responses from the professional bodies. She said that a £5 million maximum fine would have wiped out smaller bodies such as the Institute of Legal Executives.



Ms Manzoor, who is also the Legal Services Ombudsman, was appointed to the newly created office of the LSCC in March to oversee complaints handling in the profession.