The reputation of solicitors as a group, their 'brand name', is one of the most valuable assets our profession possess.

Despite others trying to break into our market, when a member of the public wants legal advice the vast majority still automatically thinks 'solicitor'.

Coca Cola, Ford and Virgin, for example, all recognise the immense value of their names.

We should too.Over the last decade one of the biggest threats to that reputation has been how we deal with complaints.

The old Solicitors Complaints Bureau had a poor image and, despite valiant efforts, the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors (OSS) is still not highly regarded by solicitors, clients or politicians.

The much-publicised backlog of cases and delays have been used against us in countless newspaper articles and were our critics' main line of counter-attack against us in the recent legal aid campaign.

No wonder that when solicitors were asked to identify the 12 most important issues facing the profession the OSS was near the top.In these updates we have repeatedly mentioned our new approach.

Instead of accepting anything at face value, we re-examine the basics and look for independent verification.

In this instance, we brought in a team of experts from Ernst & Young to examine the OSS afresh, to confirm exactly what the extent of the problem was, its strengths, weaknesses and what needed to be done to sort it out.

The team's report was presented to the Law Society Council last week.The good news: the level of complaints is not as bad as we had anticipated.

An out-of-date computer system meant that the OSS's statistics had been unreliable.

This has since been replaced.

Ernst & Young provided also an improved complainant-centred definition of what constitutes a complaint.

This has given us a far better measure of the problem and what needs to be done to address it.The true number of complaints is just over 19,000 a year.

The rate of increase has averaged around 14% during the last two years.The bad news is that the OSS cannot deal with the current flow of cases, let alone reduce the backlog.

If nothing is done, that backlog will continue growing.

We do not believe allowing that to occur is an option.The ongoing debate about the benefits of external regulation compared with self-regulation is irrelevant to this issue.

Even if complaints handling is passed to an external regulator, the system should be handed over in good order as we would still have to pay to make the new system function properly.

The complaints handling system we have now must be made to work better.We want a system which works quickly, efficiently and fairly.

We believe external pressures give us about 18 months to achieve this.Ernst & Young has prepared a blueprint for clearing the backlog by December 2000 and creating a system thereafter which will be able to deal with complaints within the accepted industry norm of three months.The logic behind that target is simple.

Leave a complaint too long and positions become entrenched.

Dealing with it quickly is cheaper and there is more chance of a happy outcome.The cost will be high in the short term, around £5 million plus, but we believe we can cover that from existing resources without increasing the practice certificate fee.As part of the package we will be looking for increases in efficiency.

But there is more than the cost of running the OSS at stake.

The non-financial cost to the professi on of the present situation is incalculable.

It is undermining our public image and credibility.This problem has been around for a long time.

We now have an objective view of its extent and a realistic plan for tackling it.

The responsibility for succeeding lies clearly and unambiguously with the Law Society.While much can be done to improve the ability of the OSS to deal more efficiently and effectively with its workload, the complaints it has to handle originate from the profession.

The profession as a whole must wake up to the client care message.

The cost of complaints handling will reduce only if the number of complaints falls.

It is a fact of life that there will always be some complaints.

The Society wants to give the profession as much help as it can to deal with them effectively and positively in-house.