The government announcement of a Legal Services Complaints Commissioner will not dilute the Law Society's own regulatory function, says Janet Paraskeva

We have just enjoyed a highly successful solicitors annual conference.

The president's keynote address demonstrated that the Law Society is forward looking.

We are ready to embrace - and help to shape - change both in the way legal services are provided in the future and in the regulatory structure for legal services, while holding firm to the profession's enduring values of independence, high quality, and putting the interests of the client first.

The president's speech was warmly received, and rightly so.

The conference also featured a number of stimulating sessions on subjects as diverse as legal aid, commercial costs and money laundering, as well as sessions on promoting diversity, achieving a work/life balance, and solicitors and the public interest.

But none of that received as much coverage in the media as the announcement from Lord Falconer, Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, that he had decided to invoke the powers to appoint a Legal Services Complaints Commissioner, under the provisions of the Access to Justice Act 2000.

The commissioner will have power to set targets concerning the Society's complaints handling and - assuming the necessary statutory instruments are approved - to fine the Society if it fails to meet them.

The announcement was portrayed in somewhat lurid terms in some newspapers as being the beginning of the end for self-regulation.

In fact, it is nothing of the sort.

First, the appointment is aimed at our handling of consumer complaints, not at our core regulatory functions of setting the requirements for admission to the profession, setting standards of conduct for solicitors, monitoring and enforcing rules, intervening in firms where necessary, and prosecuting cases before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

Indeed, Lord Falconer praised our work on those regulatory issues.

Secondly, the appointment of a complaints commissioner is not a radical departure - it is an organic development of the external scrutiny of our complaints handling that has existed for almost 30 years - first in the form of the Lay Observer, and more recently through the Legal Services Ombudsman, whose powers have been increased in successive legislation.

Even before the announcement of the complaints commissioner, the ombudsman has some coercive powers against the Society and individual solicitors, as well as power to make recommendations about our complaints handling generally in the modern age.

It is inevitable that if a professional body is to carry responsibility for dealing with consumer complaints, a great deal of external scrutiny will be needed.

This is not intended to disguise our disappointment at Lord Falconer's decision.

We recognise that although our performance in handling complaints is much better than it was at the time the Access to Justice Act was passed - and is broadly comparable with bodies such as the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Law Society of Scotland - it has not improved as rapidly as we had hoped.

That is why we decided last year to take advice from expert outside consultants, who have a record of helping to introduce effective consumer complaints systems.

We are now in the process of implementing their recommendations - including the creation of a dedicated directorate to deal with consumer complaints, separate from the rest of our regulatory functions.

We are confident that the implementation of these recommendations will steadily improve our complaints handling so that we can achieve a level of performance to be proud of.

As it happens, the future handling of consumer complaints was a major subject for discussion at a Law Society Council conference, held at the start of September.

Although the council was not taking formal decisions at that conference, there was a view that the Society should seek the orderly transfer of its responsibility for dealing with consumer complaints to a new body, perhaps along the lines of the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Council members recognised that however well consumer complaints were dealt with by the Society, the public perception of independence would always be affected by the fact that the Society is also the professional body responsible for regulating and representing solicitors.

Most commentators assume that David Clementi's review of the regulation of legal services is likely to come to a similar conclusion.

In that case, the complaints commissioner, acting alongside the Society's own consumer complaints mechanism, may well be a short-lived part of the legal landscape.

We will, of course, co-operate properly with the complaints commissioner in her new role, but despite the appointment of the commissioner, the Society retains primary responsibility for complaints handling.

We remain committed to bringing about the improvements in complaints handling that we have already set in train.

Janet Paraskeva is the Law Society's chief executive