The Law Society has increased five-fold the amount of compensation for distress and inconvenience it is awarding to clients who make justified complaints about inadequate professional service, it has emerged.

Giving evidence to the House of Commons' constitutional affairs select committee, the Legal Services Ombudsman, Zahida Manzoor, said that whereas up to last year monthly compensation awards totalled 10,000-15,000, the monthly total was 50,000 to 85,000 over the past six months.

She said this was the result of more awards being made, rather than higher awards, and she encouraged the Law Society to make more awards at the top end of the 5,000 limit.

Law Society chief executive Janet Paraskeva said: 'There has been an increase in both the number and average size of monthly payments since June 2003.

'In May last year, we introduced new guidelines which have increased the size of individual payments.

Staff now routinely review every case when it is concluded to see if a payment is warranted.

As the case closure rate has improved, we have been able to deal with cases where delay was an issue and so payments have been more likely.'

On making bigger awards, Ms Paraskeva said: 'We are already examining other regulators who make payments for distress and inconvenience to see whether the awards which we currently make are out of line.

After this benchmarking exercise, we will consider the levels of awards we make.'

Ms Manzoor also welcomed as 'excellent news' figures from the Society showing that in recent months it generally closed more complaints than it received.

Neil Rose