Complaints commissioner spares Law Society from second fine

23 June 2008

The legal services complaints commissioner has spared the Law Society from a second fine, while noting that the profession failed to meet its targets for the year ending March 31 2008.

Earlier this month Zahida Manzoor announced she was fining the Society £275,000 for failing to draw up an adequate plan for this year.

“Whilst I would have liked to have announced that the LCS and SRA have met all the targets I set, I acknowledge that improvements have been made in most areas,” she said.

“I am particularly pleased that jointly LCS and SRA met their overall target to close 67 per cent of cases within three months. The LCS achieved 63 per cent and the SRA 77 per cent."

Manzoor said the SRA was pulling away from the LCS in terms of performance, meeting five out of six quality targets compared to only three out of seven for the LCS.

“The LCS has a long way to go in terms of value for money, cost efficiency and quality,” she said.

“When I announced my decision in November 2007 not to impose a penalty on the Law Society for LCS and SRA’s failure to handle complaints in accordance with their improvement plan for 2006-2007, I said I would be unlikely to extend the same latitude again.

“However, where there were failures against the targets for last year, I have set these against the improvements that have been made.”

One of the targets was to close 67 per cent of complaints within three months. The SRA achieved 77 per cent, compared to only 63 per cent for the LCS.

Manzoor said the LCS needed to commit to further improvements as it moved towards closure in the next two years, and to handing over its work to the new Office for Legal Complaints in 2010.