Legal Services Ombudsman
This page contains information about the Legal Services Ombudsman, including:
What it does
Advantages and disadvantages
Which complaints are eligible?
When can a complaint be considered?
Cost
Timescale
Procedure
Outcomes
User satisfaction
What it does
The Legal Services Ombudsman (LSO) investigates complaints about legal services in England and Wales, and in particular the way in which a professional body has handled a complaint about a legal practitioner. These professional bodies are:
- the Law Society
- the General Council of the Bar
- the Institute of Legal Executives
- the Council for Licensed Conveyancers
- the Chartered Institute of Patent Agents
- the Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys
- the Association of Law Costs Draftsmen
These are now referred to as 'approved regulators'.
The ombudsman cannot be a qualified lawyer and is independent of the legal profession.
A new Legal Ombudsman for England and Wales will begin operating in 2010, replacing the existing complaints-handling by the professional bodies and the Office of the Legal Services Ombudsman.
Complaints about legal services in Scotland are dealt with by the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission and those in Northern Ireland by the Lay Observer for Northern Ireland.
Complaints about the Legal Services Commission (which administers Legal Aid) and about the Court Service are dealt with by the Parliamentary Ombudsman.
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Advantages
- it is independent of the organisations that are the subjects of the complaints it handles
- it is private – individual complainants are not identified publicly
- it is free
- it can result in the complaint being further investigated
- it is possible to get compensation for inconvenience, distress and/or loss
- it can lead to improvements in complaints-handling procedures within the professional bodies
Disadvantages
- it is the final rung in a long complaints process
It is important to remind complainants that the ombudsman will not act as their advocate or enforce their rights. The aims of the scheme are to determine whether a complaint has been handled fairly, thoroughly and impartially by the professional body; assess whether the decision made was reasonable; and influence good practice in complaints handling by the professional bodies it oversees.
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Which complaints are eligible?
The ombudsman’s main role is to oversee the way in which a complaint has been dealt with by the professional body. She will check that all the complaints were addressed and that this was done within a reasonable time, and she will want to be satisfied that the professional body reached a reasonable decision. She can also widen her investigation to include the cause of the original complaint to the professional body. However, her role is not to look at every case as if it were an appeal against the decision of the professional body. If the ombudsman believes that a complaint has not been investigated properly, she will probably recommend that the professional body looks at the matter again.
The original source of the complaint may relate to the practitioner’s alleged poor service or misconduct. Common complaints are:
- delay or inaction
- disregarding instructions
- failure to keep the client informed
- dishonesty
- conflict of interest
- no reply to letters/telephone calls
- inadequate costs information or overcharging
- giving bad advice
The vast majority of reports issued relate to solicitors and to complaints handled either by the Legal Complaints Service or the Solicitors Regulation Authority; in 2009-10 this was about 90%. The rest related to barristers and licensed conveyancers.
The ombudsman cannot consider complaints about organisations not within her remit, including:
- the Legal Services Commission
- the Court Service
- judges
The ombudsman cannot consider complaints made by a legal practitioner about the handling of a complaint about them.
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When can a complaint be considered?
A complaint about a legal practitioner must first be brought to the attention of the practitioner or firm directly, and if possible to a senior partner. All legal practitioners are expected to operate a complaints-handling procedure and to inform clients of this in their client care communication.
If the complainant remains dissatisfied, they can then approach the relevant professional body, such as the Law Society. Each of the professional bodies is expected to have an efficient system for handling complaints. In the case of the Law Society, complaints about poor service or disputed bills are handled by the Legal Complaints Service and those about alleged misconduct by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The Law Society has been heavily criticised by the Legal Services Ombudsman for inadequate case handling, in particular long delays and huge backlogs of cases. The other professional bodies run their own complaints-handling systems, which generally appear to operate to the ombudsman’s satisfaction.
If a complainant remains dissatisfied with the way the professional body has handled the complaint, they can then ask the ombudsman to investigate.
The complaint must be brought to the ombudsman within three months of the conclusion of the professional body’s investigation. Since January 1999, however, the ombudsman has had discretion to accept complaints outside this deadline where "special reasons" exist.
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Cost
The scheme is free to complainants.
Legal Aid is available for eligible clients for help in preparing a complaint.
The ombudsman can recommend that complainants are reimbursed reasonable expenses involved in taking a complaint to the ombudsman, but only if she has also recommended that the professional body or lawyer pay compensation.
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Timescale
The average turnaround time for investigated complaints in 2009-10 was just under three months. Some complaints will be dealt with more quickly, and some take longer.
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Procedure
Complaints should first be taken to the relevant professional body. Many of these bodies require or encourage conciliation between the complainant and the practitioner at the first stage. For example, the Law Society now looks to see if conciliation is possible as a first stage. For many complainants, it may be difficult to consider conciliation provided by the professional body as independent and impartial.
Initial consideration
If the complainant remains dissatisfied with the outcome of the professional body’s complaints procedure, the complaint can be referred to the ombudsman. The ombudsman also has discretion to accept complaints in some cases in which the complaints procedure has not been exhausted.
If the complaint is one the ombudsman can deal with, the office will send for the case file from the professional body.
If on initial consideration the ombudsman’s staff determine that the complaint is not one they can consider because it is outside the remit of the scheme, the complainant will be notified and given an explanation.
Investigation
If the complaint is one that can be investigated, an investigating officer will be assigned. If there is likely to be a delay in investigating the case, the complainant will be notified.
Complainants will not be called for an interview, but they might be contacted by the investigating officer for further clarification.
Once the investigation has been completed, a report will be sent to the complainant, the legal practitioner, and the professional body. The report may contain recommendations. Since September 1999 the ombudsman has had the power to make legally binding orders where the "original complaint" has been investigated.
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Outcomes
The ombudsman’s decisions emphasise what is fair and reasonable, not the strictly legal position, and they take into account current codes of practice.
Remedies
Among the remedies that the ombudsman can recommend are that:
- the professional body and/or the legal practitioner pay compensation for loss, distress and/or inconvenience
- the legal practitioner and/or the professional body reimburse the cost of making the complaint to the ombudsman (provided that they have also been recommended to pay compensation)
- the professional body reconsider the complaint
- the professional body consider exercising one of its powers (eg to impose a disciplinary sanction)
Although the ombudsman cannot order that a practitioner reduce their fees, this can be a consequence of the complaint being reconsidered by the professional body.
In 2009-10, the ombudsman issued 1,704 reports, including 1,069 related to the Legal Complaints Service’s handling of complaints about solicitors’ service. The ombudsman was critical of the way the complaint had been handled in 28% of the cases, and recommended that the complaint be reconsidered and/or the complainant compensated in 208 cases.
There is no maximum amount of compensation. In 2009-10, the ombudsman recommended that the Legal Complaints Service should pay compensation in 48 cases, with an average award of £307.
Compliance
The professional body or legal practitioner has three months from receiving the ombudsman’s report to say what action they have taken, or what action they will take, in response.
If they fail to reply in that time, the ombudsman can require them to publicise their reasons for rejecting her recommendations. Although compliance has not been a problem in the past as far as the professional bodies are concerned, where a recommendation has required an individual practitioner to pay compensation, it has not always been complied with.
Since September 1999, the ombudsman has had the option to issue legally enforceable compensation orders. She will now make one of these binding orders when she has decided that a legal practitioner should pay compensation.
The ombudsman’s office follows up on recommendations, to check that they have been complied with> this will be the case in particular where she has recommended that a decision should be reconsidered, or compensation should be paid.
There is no appeal against the ombudsman’s recommendations or binding orders, but complainants retain their right to go to court if they are dissatisfied with the outcome. As with other public authorities, the decisions of the ombudsman are subject to judicial review.
Good practice
One of the advantages of the ombudsman is that she can influence good practice among professional bodies and among practitioners. The ombudsman’s reports can identify areas where changes in practice or procedure could improve the complaints handling of the body involved. The ombudsman also has a statutory right to make general recommendations to the professional bodies independently of individual cases, although in relation to the Law Society, this power has transferred to the Legal Services Complaints Commissioner, which oversees the way the Law Society handles complaints but does not consider individual complaints.
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User satisfaction
In March 1999 an independent study of the experience of users of the Legal Services Ombudsman was published (Satisfaction in a ‘Super-Escalated’ Complaint Environment, Customer Management Consultancy Ltd). Follow-up research in 2001 found that reductions in case turnaround time had improved customer satisfaction. The research also found that complainants continued to be frustrated by what is a long and multi-level complaints process, with too many stages, creating delay and dissatisfaction.
One problem with trying to gauge user satisfaction was the high level of confusion about the role and remit of the ombudsman, and the link with type of outcome. Nearly half the complainants (49%) were found to have unrealistic expectations of what the ombudsman can do, and expected their original complaint to be re-opened.
In July 2004 Craigforth Consultancy and Research did further research; ‘Satisfying the Dissatisfied: Legal Services Ombudsman Baseline Surveys Revisited’. They found that it remained a considerable challenge to satisfy those who have been dissatisfied at each stage of this extended – or super-escalated – complaint process. The main achievement of the Office of the Legal Services Ombudsman was the successful reduction of the length of time for cases to be closed, while retaining service quality.
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July 2010
Key websites
Legal Services Ombudsman for England and Wales
