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                            Complaints body goes looking for trouble

 

The Office for Legal Complaints must make a real effort to reach out to consumers who do not have the skills and confidence to complain when they get bad service from lawyers, says the chair of the new, independent Consumer Complaints Board (CCB), in its response to the White Paper, “The Future of Legal Services”.

 

Chaired by Professor Shamit Saggar, the CCB is intended to be independent of the other arms of the Law Society and became operational on 1 January 2006. Its lay members outnumber solicitors, and no solicitor who is involved in the representative function of the Law Society Council can sit on it.

 

Whilst Professor Saggar was forthright on the need to win the “full confidence of consumers and the public”, he had nothing to say about the need to do the same for solicitors.

 

Although the Law Society has, for many years past, spent the majority of it’s income on disciplining and punishing it’s members, Professor Saggar feels that with a little more effort, even more complaints could be generated, especially by those who are “disadvantaged”.

 

According to the professor, both the CCB and (when it is established) the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) must “reach out to consumers who lack the skills or the confidence to complain”.  Whilst Proffesor Saggar appeared happy to acknowledge that “many mechanisms are already in place to help disadvantaged people to complain”, he felt that “ more needs to be done. Our redress must not be available only to the well-heeled and articulate.”

 

In consequence, the CCB apparently sees the role of the OLC as not merely dealing with existing problems, but also dealing with potential issues for consumers, which presumably includes mounting an outreach mission to people who, for reasons of poverty or lack of education, might not otherwise get “a fair crack of the whip”.

 

The Law Society continues it’s campaign to become  the solicitors’ representative body, post Clementi.