Ombudsman holds out hope on complaints

INTERVIEW: Ann Abraham reports 'significant progress' in complaints handling

A year is a long time in the recent history of complaints handling within the solicitors' profession.

Twelve months ago, the Legal Services Ombudsman (LSO), Ann Abraham, sounded a doom-laden warning that the Law Society and the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors (OSS) had better clean up their collective act or face a serious threat to the future of self-regulation.This week, the ombudsman publishes her annual report against a much more positive, if still cautious, background.

Indeed, Ms Abraham tells the Gazette that the 'significant progress' made by both is one of the main themes of her report.'I am very pleased to see how much progress has been made on the governance and management reforms,' she says, 'particularly that regulation is now a joined-up slice of the Law Society.' Ms Abraham highlights the recently formed regulation directorate as an important development, putting complaints handling in the broader landscape of rule-making, standards, ethics and training.

'The coherent framework - which last year I said was not detectable - now seems to be planned to be in place, and key components of it are in place.

That is a huge difference in comparison with 12 months ago, when I was being very critical of the absence of joined-up thinking.' She describes the regulation directorate as being 'what I would expect to see in a model regulator'.Ms Abraham also praises the OSS, which eradicated the lion's share of its case backlog in line with the government-set deadline of December last year.

'The other big difference this year is that the OSS is not sitting on 17,000 complaints,' says Ms Abraham.

'The fact that the OSS is out of crisis again represents significant progress.'The ombudsman says her main concern is what she perceives as a lack of movement on the Law Society's proposed redress scheme, including plans for a lay complaints commissioner.

Ms Abraham describes the redress scheme as 'remaining as a concept, and not a very fleshed-out concept at that'.

Last year, Ms Abraham was adamant that the Society must fully resource the complaints-handling function.

While stating firmly that 'the level of the practising certificate fee is a matter for the Law Society', she says Chancery Lane 'is now showing the sort of financial commitment to addressing complaints handling that was missing in the past'.

She adds: 'I have asked members of the compliance & supervision committee, as was, whether they believe the OSS is adequately resourced and they have said yes.

And, frankly, they know better than I do.'The concept of wider client care has always formed a crucial part of Ms Abraham's solution to reducing complaints.

And here, too, she sees signs of improvement.

'From anecdotal evidence, there are regular illustrations of solicitors who take complaints seriously and deal with them well, even in the files that I see.

It is also encouraging to see the leaders of the profession now making it clear that they understand these issues.'But the real challenge now for the Law Society, the OSS and the profession, is to clear out the dinosaurs.

There are regular examples that cross my desk of outrageous behaviour by solicitors who are causing huge damage to the reputation of the profession by behaving in ways which are totally unacceptable.

The Law Society needs to roll its sleeves up and deal with them.'However, while the Law Society and the OSS may no longer be drinking in the last chance saloon, the ombudsman makes clear that there is no room for complacency.

'The ideas are right, but there is too much history of non-delivery.

It never was enough for the Law Society to draw up nice organisational charts and make public assertions about what it is going to do.

The real sea change in public confidence, in government confidence and in my confidence is going to be when these things [reforms] form part of the landscape.'But there is now a real understanding at the Law Society of what being a model regulator means.

And it is now better placed than it has ever been to build it.'Jonathan Ames