Reflections on five years

October 2013 marked the fifth anniversary of the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission. Having reached this significant milestone in our history, we decided to take the opportunity to carry out some analysis of the legal complaints we have received over the past five years, particularly focusing on the areas of law that attract most complaints, and the most common reasons for clients making a complaint.

Business areas

Looking at legal business areas, it is probably no great surprise that the areas which tend to be most complained about are those connected with lifechanging events and where clients are more likely to have strong emotional attachment.

Residential conveyancing has featured prominently and consistently over the five-year period, and accounts for one fifth of all the complaints we have received. Complaints arising from litigation and family law business are practically level pegging at 16% and 15% respectively, followed by executries, wills and trusts (11%).

The figures for the most recent year (2012-13) show that this ratio has shifted slightly, however, with litigation and family law complaints (at 18% each) marginally overtaking residential conveyancing (17%). We think that this is probably a blip, indicating the knock-on effect of the downturn in the housing market, and will be reversed as that market picks up.

Complaint reasons

To get a better understanding of the issues underlying the complaints data, we drilled down to see what clients were complaining most about.

People tend to look to solicitors for advice and guidance. The data show that complaints tend to arise from situations where there have been shortcomings in the adequacy of that advice, or, more commonly, from failures in how effectively that advice has been communicated to them.

By far the problem that most people complain about is poor or ineffective communication; this represents more than a fifth of all the complaints which we have received since 2008.

If we take together the top four reasons for people complaining – as all of these are communication-related – this accounts for a staggering 56% of all our complaints. Only a very small number of complaints stem from a practitioner making a technical error in the law. Instead, these “softer” issues have a much greater tendency to result in an inadequate level of service. As such, these are complaints which, in our view, could very often be easily avoided.

We have recently put together a guidance leaflet to assist solicitors in avoiding the most common complaint-attracting factors. What we suggest isn’t exactly rocket science. However, if every solicitor in Scotland did all the things which we suggest all the time, we would have very few complaints about inadequate services. The guidance is now available for download from the SLCC website.

Early resolution

The research which we commissioned in 2011 from TNS BRMB indicated that just over a half of complaints were being resolved by practitioners at first tier – a message which appears to be reflected in our own data. We think this is extremely good news for the profession, and we welcome and promote as best practice the early resolution of complaints where this is possible and appropriate.

We have produced separate guidance to assist solicitors in resolving complaints which, again, is available from the SLCC website.

However, while it may be the case that more complaints are being resolved by practitioners, there is clearly no room for complacency. As can be seen from the full report, complaints in the top four business areas are increasing and practitioners would do well to consider their risk exposure in these areas in particular.

The research also highlighted the fact that resolving complaints poses a greater challenge for sole practitioners and smaller firms. This is, I think, completely logical when you consider, for example, the disproportionate impact on fee time and the potentially increased reputational risk.

We are currently working on guidance specifically to assist sole practitioners and smaller firms in meeting these challenges.

As part of this project we are engaging with a small number of sole practitioners to gain a better understanding of the issues and problems they experience in dealing with complaints. If any readers are interested in participating, I should be very pleased to hear from you.

Ultimately the aim of the SLCC is to reduce complaints. We see ourselves doing this through promoting best practice on the part of the legal profession to prevent the issues which lead to complaints and, as I’ve already said, by encouraging early resolution when things do go wrong.

Going forward, we will build on the analysis undertaken to provide further guidance to assist the profession in complaint handling, specifically targeting those business areas which pose the highest risks.

Oversight five years on

The SLCC’s fifth annual report is to be laid before the Scottish Parliament on 17 December 2013.

The full version of the data analysis, Five years on, is available on the SLCC website: www.Scottish LegalComplaints.org.uk

Oversight is the area of the SLCC responsible for overseeing how the professional bodies deal with conduct complaints; monitoring and reporting trends in complaints; and producing guidance and best practice notes on complaint handling.