Legal services regulators should do more to ensure lawyers present key information for clients in the same way as each other, the consumer watchdog says today.

A report by the Legal Services Consumer Panel says the Solicitors Regulation Authority and others should be ‘more pro-active in pushing lawyers ’to present information in a clearer and more standardised way.'

The report warns that measures such as requiring law firms to give information on complaints options and service levels, as recommended by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), will not work if regulators do not prescribe the format or form of words that should be used.

The panel says that standardisation can benefit lawyers too, by reducing the burden on firms. 

Panel chair Sarah Chambers said there has been progress in the variety and quality of information provided to consumers, but in some areas this is not having the desired effect. For example clients often had insufficient information to know how to complain.

‘Regulators must do more to ensure that the spirit and intentions of the transparency recommendations made by the CMA are realised,' Chambers said. ‘For example, while consumers now have access to pricing information in some areas of law, the way in which prices are displayed can make it very hard for consumers to compare prices between different providers, regulators should do more to effect change.’

Sarah Chambers

Chambers: Clients often had insufficient information to know how to complain

The panel suggests that standardising the form of words in a letter, or devising recommended or mandatory templates, will make it easier to test whether consumers are getting the right information.

Transparency and giving consumers the ability to shop around for a lawyer continues to be a bugbear for the panel, which acknowledges in its report that 43% of firms do so but says this is still ‘nowhere near the levels needed for us to be satisfied’.

The panel said its own research found that fewer than a quarter of a sample of firms offer prospective clients the opportunity to calculate a conveyancing fee. The same research found that 26.6% offer prospective clients no guidance at all on likely costs. And although 44.1% offer indicative fee guidance, the detail of this guidance was often contained in ‘impenetrable tables reached through hyperlinks’. The panel said 68.2% of the sample could be said to be compliant with regulators’ prescriptive rules on price transparency, but only 6.3% were delivering a quote without requiring prospective clients to register with them.

The report adds: ‘This naturally hinders the ability of consumers to shop around and warrants an exploration of standardising information for better comparability. This standardisation, however, will not happen without regulatory intervention and leadership.’

 

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