A year since we launched - and I suppose we have to accept that it is now officially the end of the beginning. Frankly, it is a bit of a shock to realise that we have been up and running for that length of time. It comes as an even greater shock to receive a number of messages of congratulation for negotiating the start-up process without too many hitches. We are so conscious of how much we have still got to learn that we have not really focused on what we have actually managed to achieve.

Sadly, that tendency towards self-criticism is somewhat characteristic of the organisation. Our Stakeholder Advisory Panel - a group of lawyers, consumer representatives and other experts we use as an outside source of inspection and advice - recently took us to task for failing adequately to celebrate our successes. But organisations are often reflections of those who set them up and I have always used the consciousness of what remains to be done as a way of motivating myself. And heaven knows, there is a lot still to be done.

That is the key driver in the thinking behind our draft strategy, which we have just put out for consultation. Some of what we say is blindingly obvious: we are still in our infancy as an ombudsman scheme and we need to spend much of the next year or two getting better at what we do. But a significant part of the strategy is shaped by our recognition of how quick on our feet we will have to be to adapt to the changes in the sector. Alternative business structures, the changes in legal aid, the Jackson review, the banning of referral fees, the continuing impact of the recession - all of these are going to have an impact on the way we work.

Planning for those changes is difficult in the extreme. At the most fundamental level, we simply cannot know what they will mean for the volume of complaints with which we will be required to deal. Legal aid cuts and the continuing travails of the housing market, for example, will undoubtedly mean fewer transactions in some areas of law. On the other hand, evidence from other ombudsman schemes indicates that there is an increasing tendency for consumers to complain, and most schemes are seeing a significant increase in work. Given that the volume of complaints we receive drives our staffing levels, and therefore costs, this is a key planning assumption for us.

And of course volume is critically affected by lawyer behaviour. Many of the complaints we see are simply the result of honest mistakes and misunderstandings - even those that sound severe, such as in the case of the solicitor arrested below. But some of the matters which reach us are the result of some very basic mistakes - things which should have been picked up when the complaint first came into the firm, or issues which could easily have been avoided had the firm bothered to deal adequately with the complaint. Consider the following case studies.

French connection

Ms K employed a law firm in 2001 to help sort out her divorce. As part of the settlement, her ex-husband was ordered to sign over a French property that belonged to both of them. This should have been done within eight weeks of the order. But seven years later, the transfer still had not been completed.

Ms K blamed her lawyer. She complained that the firm had not advised her properly about how and when the transfer of the French property should have been completed; did not pursue her ‘ex’ in court as instructed; was rude about her in an email; and failed to respond properly to her various queries and letters of complaint. Nothing less than a hefty compensation payment would assuage her feelings of frustration, loss of dignity and hurt pride.

The problem was that she had used legal aid when she hired the law firm, which they said limited what they were being paid to do for her. Chasing down French documentation relating to the property, and applying to an English court to get a judge to sign these on behalf of an uncooperative ex-husband, were not on their to-do list. These things, the firm told her repeatedly, were up to her and her estranged partner to sort out between them. In other words, the firm said they had done all they reasonably could and should in the circumstances.

The ombudsman did not think the first two elements of the complaint were justified. The firm, having helped secure the original order, did not have a continuing duty to police its implementation. But the ombudsman did decide that the firm should write a letter of apology to Ms K for its failure to respond adequately to her correspondence, and pay her £500 in compensation for the stress and inconvenience caused. Mrs K did not accept this decision, so the case was closed.

In solicitors we trust

Mr F complained to us as he was unhappy with the way his lawyer had handled drawing up a will and trust deed for him. He had signed his will after it had been drawn up, but did not receive the approved draft trust deed. After paying the lawyer’s bill for the will-writing, Mr F waited for another two months before chasing the trust deed. He eventually received an email from the lawyer to say his documents were ready to sign, followed swiftly by a second bill for the trust declaration, which included a Land Registry fee.

Mr F took the signed documents into the lawyer’s office and paid the latest bill. But he later received another bill for the same work. Although the firm confirmed that this had been sent in error, Mr F’s confidence in the firm was beginning to wane. When Mr F still had not received some of the paperwork he needed, he tried to contact his lawyer. Having got no response to his numerous phone calls and emails, he decided to visit the office in person. His lawyer came to the door and assured Mr F that everything was in hand. But he failed to mention that he had actually ceased trading two months earlier.

Mr F thought it would be wise to contact the Land Registry himself to chase progress and was told that no application had been made. He decided at that point to write a letter of complaint to the firm, but again got no response.

In the end, Mr F had to employ another lawyer to complete the work. This firm told him that the draft trust declaration drawn up by the original lawyer was unusable, which meant the work had to be started again.

Mr F came to us with a string of complaints - the delay, the fact that the work had not been completed, that he had had to pay for it to be done again, and that his first lawyer had not bothered to tell him he had ceased trading.

Our investigation found that, although the original lawyer had done some of the work required, this had not been completed. And it was clear that Mr F had spent a lot of time chasing progress. We agreed as well that Mr F had been obliged to employ another lawyer to complete the work, leaving him to pay all over again.

The ombudsman decided the lawyer must refund the money Mr F had paid for the incomplete Declaration of Trust (£255.63) and pay for the additional legal fees Mr F had incurred (£776.37). He was also ordered to return all papers and documents to Mr F and pay an additional £200 in compensation for the distress and inconvenience caused. Mr F accepted the ombudsman’s decision.

Solicitor arrested

Mr and Mrs N complained that their lawyer had not taken their concerns about aspects of his work for them seriously. The firm had been taken on to help with two separate matters – an employment tribunal and a mortgage insurance issue.

In October 2010, we contacted the couple’s solicitor with the first of what turned out to be numerous requests for documents and information relating to the case. After a full seven months of trying, but failing, to get a response (by letter, email, phone and, finally, a formal notice), we decided to take enforcement action against him.

The court first tried to deal with the case in May, but the solicitor failed to attend. So the judge ordered his arrest. The solicitor surrendered to the court a few days later, where a date was set for a formal hearing. At that hearing, the solicitor promised the High Court he would cooperate with our investigation into the complaint against him and said he understood that he risked being punished unless he did so. The judge told him it was ‘absolutely essential’ he communicated with the ombudsman and cooperated to a high professional standard. Failure, said the judge, was ‘likely to attract the sanction of the court’.

The lawyer duly gave an undertaking to do everything he could to help find the files we needed. He promised to cooperate with our investigation into the original complaint against him (as well as any others that may arise), and to keep us updated with his contact details. He was also fined £5,000 for his failure to cooperate with the ombudsman - in short for a failure to take his obligations around complaints seriously - and was ordered to pay the ombudsman’s costs at that point, which amounted to over £11,000.

It took court intervention for this case to be able to progress. And since we wrote about this in our last column here, we have indeed seen some progress. The solicitor has now provided the papers needed for the ombudsman to make a final decision, so we are waiting for the complainants to tell us whether they accept that decision or not. What is obvious is that the lack of cooperation has hugely complicated what was, from the evidence, a relatively straightforward complaint. It was something which simply should not have taken this long to resolve - and it would not have if we’d not had to involve the courts.

These failures to manage the first-tier complaints process result in the ombudsman having to do more work (work for which, lest you forget, you are paying). In addition, when eventually we get round to publishing our decisions (and this will happen, if only because that is the way that government is requiring all its statutory offshoots to act), the greatest impact will be on the firms who do not seem to be willing or able to manage their complaints process properly.

Name and shame

All of the case studies quoted here are ombudsman decisions and therefore we will publish them, anonymously at present. We hope that they help share learning about what to do - and what to avoid - to resolve complaints when they happen, and preferably prevent them occurring in the first place.

But what is also telling is this: each of these cases, barring the one which required court action, shows how far any form of publication can stray from a concept of naming and shaming. There will be those cases that are so exceptional and severe that publication of the names of lawyers might well be in the public interest. We have included one such case here. On the other hand, we have always said that complaints can - and will - happen at any time, and that sometimes the independent voice of the ombudsman is needed to break a deadlock.

Sharing information about complaints should not be designed to add stigma to what can be an already difficult process. But these cases illustrate just how easily the lawyers involved could tackle relatively simple quality and communication issues to avoid complaints.

A monthly column featuring practical advice and anonymised case ­studies from chief ombudsman Adam Sampson and his team