Do lawyers scare you?

I declare an interest here. I am one. And I am taking Adam Sampson’s remarks personally. Like many other legal practitioners I subscribe to the view that reason and negotiation are more productive than intimidation any day of the week, whether you are litigating or trying to close a deal.

There’s support for Sampson’s comments, however, at least as far as client relations are concerned, in YouGov research commissioned by the Legal Ombudsman and the Legal Services consumer panel.

An online survey of 1,010 “premature complainants” – consisting of people who didn’t complain to their lawyers before going to the Legal Ombudsman – found a distinct reluctance on the part of clients to take their legal advisors to task, particularly when a case is ongoing.

People find it confusing and often intimidating to air grievances with their lawyers, the research concluded: “Inherent within the complaints system is a lack of confidence that the complaints process with a legal services provider will work objectively and a feeling that to complain will disadvantage the consumer.”

Lawyers were not the only recipient of complaints from the survey’s participants. The YouGov research found that the Legal Ombudsman, as Sampson accepted in his post on Monday, could do better. The problem is that consumers don’t understand where the scheme fits in to the complaints process or what it can achieve.

A fifth of those surveyed thought, mistakenly, that the Legal Ombudsman could take over a complaint against a law firm, before it had been concluded.

To another 10% of participants the Legal Ombudsman system seemed too complicated. A third of premature complainants didn’t go back to the Legal Ombudsman when complaints weren’t resolved to their satisfaction and the YouGov research put this down to “a sense of fatigue and disenchantment”. Aggrieved customers get tired of feeling that they are being passed between systems and 37% of those surveyed were so fed up they just let their complaints go.

The free complaints resolution service the Legal Ombudsman provides to members of the public is independent and impartial. While it is not a consumer champion – something else people find difficult to understand – it can investigate complaints and award compensation against legal service providers such as solicitors, barristers, licensed conveyancers and trade mark attorneys. The ombudsman can also instruct lawyers to do more work to put things right, to reduce fees, and to apologise.

The YouGov research said the Legal Ombudsman needs to be clearer in its communications with consumers: “53 per cent of people felt that the guidance from the Legal Ombudsman’s website was to contact the Legal Ombudsman itself. This shows that there is an issue here relating to clarity of advice and the large potential for people to misinterpret the advice given.”

The ombudsman has made a start by updating its guide to consumers about how to make complaints. A complaint can be lodged with the Legal Ombudsman if a legal service provider fails to respond within eight weeks, or if the client isn’t satisfied with the final response, provided that the complaint is brought within one year of the problem arising – or coming to the attention of the complainant – and within six months of the law firm’s final response to it.

The vast majority of funding for the scheme comes from an annual levy charged by the regulatory bodies of law professionals, although a case fee of £400 is charged where a service provider has more than two complaints against it in a year.

The Legal Ombudsman service may be hiding its light under a bushel of a website. It tells me that it awarded the maximum compensation of £30,000 on three occasions in the last financial year – in one case the lawyer didn’t tell the client that a converted attic space was not included in a lease and in another the lawyer failed to advise a client that he was liable to pay the other party’s costs in a property dispute. The Legal Ombudsman’s office also tells me that it has taken 13 lawyers to court for ignoring its decisions or failing to cooperate. That information is not readily available on its website. It should be.

The Legal Ombudsman began publishing its decisions online in September and plans to update this information on a quarterly basis. The provision of that data may go some way to increasing consumer understanding about the way the scheme operates.

Source: The Guardian