The board of the Legal Complaints Service (LCS) last week decided against ditching its confidential complaints-handling advice service for solicitors.


LCS chief executive Deborah Evans asked the board to consider the future of LawyerLine, which she said 'has not been well used'.



'I am concerned that this no longer fits with the consumer-focused values of the LCS and indeed may put us in a position of conflict,' she said. 'The Solicitors Regulation Authority already offers an ethics helpline, whereby solicitors can ring for advice, and I feel that we are duplicating a part of this service for little benefit.'



However, she conceded that such a service may form part of the LCS's complaints prevention work.



Though some board members said this work should be left either to the authority or the Law Society as solicitors' representative body, the majority of both lay and solicitor members said some kind of service should be maintained. Solicitor member Mohammad Arif Khan, a government lawyer, said it was 'hard to do away with given our improvement agenda'.



Lay member Andrea Cook said redesigning the service would provide 'an ideal opportunity to consult and engage with the profession over what we can do to meet their needs'.



Chairman Professor Shamit Saggar concluded: 'Having said we want to be even-handed [between consumers and solicitors], we have to be out there ourselves and not leave it to someone else. This is a gap people expect us to fill.'



Professor Saggar said his primary concern was that solicitors would in future face a proliferation of helplines from the three arms of the Law Society.



Proposals for a revised service will be put to the board at a later meeting.



Neil Rose