Atkinson: SRA plan could lead to unwarranted complaints
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) plans for new rules on how law firms handle complaints could lead to “overregulation”, the Law Society has warned.
Requiring them to tell clients how to complain at the end of cases as well as at the start – as proposed by the SRA – could “cause practical difficulties and lead to unwarranted complaints”.
Law Society president Richard Atkinson said: “We support necessary and proportionate improvements to first-tier complaints handling.
“However, this must not lead to overregulation by the SRA through unnecessary rule changes or duplication of work already covered by the Legal Ombudsman (LeO).”
Mr Atkinson said the society supported the SRA’s proposal to require complaints information to be “clear, accessible, and prominently displayed” on solicitors’ websites.
“We do not, however, support requiring information about the complaints process being given at the end of every matter, as this may cause practical difficulties and lead to unwarranted complaints.”
Responding to a consultation by the SRA, the society said it supported firms having to provide information on how to complain at the start of a matter, on request and where a complaint was made.
However, solicitors believed that requiring it to be provided at the end “would only create an additional layer of bureaucracy and expense that would add little or no value to the process for consumers”.
It was “often difficult to identify the end of the matter” – for example in conveyancing, following a completion, firms might be dealing with retentions and land registration processes that take “up to two years to complete”.
The proposal could also lead to unwarranted complaints, the response said: “For example, a defendant convicted of a criminal offence may be unhappy with the outcome but may have received a good service.
“A firm’s letter outlining the outcome to the client, flagging the complaints process, may encourage the client to make a meritless complaint. Anecdotal information from members indicates that complaints without merit often take longer to address (adding to the costs to the firm) than those where mistakes have clearly been made.”
The Law Society did not agree either with the SRA’s proposal to adopt the definition of ‘complaint’ used by the Legal Services Board (LSB) – ‘an oral or written expression of dissatisfaction that alleges that the complainant has suffered (or may suffer) financial loss, distress, inconvenience or other detriment’.
This failed to link the customer’s satisfaction with the service provided by the law firm, which was “fundamental”, and made no mention of the cause of the dissatisfaction. For example, it would require a complaint by a client about probate delays at HM Courts and Tribunals Service to be treated as a complaint to the law firm.
On other proposals, the society was “deeply sceptical” about the SRA’s collection and publication of data on the timeliness of firms’ complaints handling, while it would be “extremely challenging” to develop a model complaints resolution procedure that was “both sufficiently high level” to accommodate diversity of law firm complaints and “sufficiently detailed to provide genuinely useful guidance” across all scenarios.
“There is a real risk that a one-size-fits-all model would be either too generic to be useful, or too prescriptive to be workable.”
The Law Society added that it was concerned about the impact on small and medium-sized firms, in particular: “If the regulatory burden results in an increase in associated costs, these are likely to be passed onto consumers which may then have an impact on access to justice.”
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