The Chief Ombudsman Adam Sampson has used his blog to look at the volume of complaints seen by the Legal Ombudsman.
He looked in particular at two statistics which he says are on the face of things contradictory.
The first statistic is the Ombudsman is waiving more case fees than anticipated. The Ombudsman will waive the £400 charge if a lawyer has co-operated with them, and also done all that they could to try to remedy the complaint at the first tier. Adam Sampson states that quite often, although not a majority of the time, this charge is waived.
Mr Sampson comments:
“There may be some grounds for concluding that one of the reasons why we’re seeing less business is that lawyers are doing better at handling complaints at the first tier.”
The second statistic is that in the customer satisfaction surveys sent out to complainants only 34.5% state that they have been made aware of the Legal Ombudsman by their lawyer. This is despite the statutory requirement for lawyers to tell clients about the Legal Ombudsman, both in general and when a complaint is made.
In even less cases were complainants told how to access the Legal Ombudsman by the lawyer. Adam Sampson added that “this second stat hints there may be a real signposting problem, creating a potential barrier to legal services customers seeking redress.”
Adam concludes that:
“We’re pushing on with an awareness raising campaign addressed at both lawyers and consumers, so hopefully you’ll spot us in the consumer press in the coming weeks and months. And we’re encouraging the regulators and professional bodies to look at this issue — supplemented by some further research we’re doing to try and identify the barriers that may be thrown up at the first tier. But really, it is up to the profession to decide what actually happens; it is lawyer, rather than consumer behaviour, which determines our caseload.”
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