Conduct and service

Communication breakdown

A factor that commonly triggers complaints from clients is a failure by the solicitor to keep the client informed on a pro-active basis about what is happening in their matter.

This failure is only then reinforced when the solicitor fails to take, or return, telephone calls from the client who is anxious to find out what is going on, although that is not the moral behind this particular Case Study.Very often, the reason for the failure is pressure of work and the fact that it takes time to generate a letter, time that the busy practitioner feels could be better and more profitably spent elsewhere.However, experience teaches that this is a false economy.

This is not only because it tends to promote complaints by exasperated clients, but also because it eventually costs the solicitor more in terms of time and trouble to resolve the situation than it would have done had the client been sent regular, short, updates.Very often, all that is required is a short letter.

Regular updates to the client also helps to obviate the danger of a file becoming overlooked so that a complaint of delay, or worse, a negligence claim, is generated.The lesson was illustrated in a complaint that reached the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors (OSS) which, in fact, was considered to be not substantiated.Mr P was acting for a client in a number of civil litigation matters.

The client complained in identical terms about all of them.

Basically, he maintained he had received no costs risk/benefit advice and that there had been delay in all the matters.Examination of the file quickly revealed that there was no justification for the first complaint.

There were several letters to the client pointing out how costs were accumulating and, in several cases, querying whether it was worth carrying on.It was also apparent that, although matters had not progressed as quickly as might have been hoped, in each case there were good reasons why that was so.

The problem was that the solicitor had not told the client until matters came to a head.All it would have needed was a short letter at the relevant time and there would not have been a problem.

As it was, when the client eventually wrote in terms that left Mr P in no doubt that he had a problem and he had to try to mollify the client, it took a 16-page letter to explain.

Then, to make matters worse, the client was by then so disaffected that he construed the letter as putting forward excuses as distinct from reasons.

Mr P was then involved in committing further time to dealing with the OSS.

X Every case before the compliance and supervision committee is decided on its individual facts.

These case studies are for illustration only and should not be treated as precedents.