You arrived at this page by selecting:Law society fails to protect the public (19/04/10)
You may or may not know this but if you had a complaint against a qualified solicitor then you could take your complaint to the Legal Complaints Service (LCS) who would handle it for you. The LCS were supposed to be responsible for investigating the complaint properly on your behalf and coming to a fair conclusion. The issue with this is that the Legal Complaints Service is run by the Law Society and they are made up of members (qualified solicitors up and down the country) who are the very ones that the complaint will probably be about. My problem with this has always been just how independent can the Law Society be? They are investigating their own members and effectively themselves to some degree.
Over the last 20 years or so the complaints arm of the Law Society has never really done a good enough job when serving the public with their complaints. The government has taken them to task a number of times to tell them to improve things and get their house in order. So periodically over the last 20 years they have re- branded themselves many times to convince the outside world that they have changed and improved. In fact the only thing that ever changed was their name, their wrapper if you like. Rather like a chocolate bar. A fancy new wrapper with a few extra colours but the thing is essentially the same inside. They might have even removed a few ingredients.
The government finally said enough is enough and decided to set up their own legal complaints service called the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC). Well the Law Society was not very pleased with that and wanted the government to at least take all their complaints staff. The government declined. After all why would you fill this new body with the same staff that didn't do a good enough job in the first place?
The Law Society issued proceedings against the Office for Legal Complaints and the government saying that Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) applied. Which essentially means that if you take over a business you must take over the staff too.
The case was heard in the High Court. After a three day trial and hearing evidence from chief executives of both the Law Society and the Office of Legal Complaints among others, the High Court judge, Mr Justice Akenhead, concluded that the TUPE Regulations will not apply to transfer any Law Society employees to the new Office of Legal Complaints and that, in the circumstances, the Government's policy on staff transfers in the public sector was not relevant.
Now lets hope the public do actually get a better deal from the Office of Legal Complaints when they start accepting complaints from customers of legal providers later this year.
By John Wilson
- Look out for my column which will be weekly from now on.
- My colleagues and I regularly provide FREE speakers to local non-profit club and group meetings. Any donations received are automatically given to charity.
- You can read all past columns on our website www.LawOffice.co.uk
- If you have a legal query that you think might be interesting to other readers too please send it to me at Horsforth Law Office, New Road Side, Horsforth, LS18 4QE. T: 0113 258 6888 or email john.wilson@LawOffice.co.uk