Editor's blog | Unfinished business

The reason, according to LeO, was a combination of a depressed property market – leading to fewer instructions, therefore reducing the potential for complaints – and unrealistic expectations from divorce clients intent on punishing their former spouses.

This appetite for revenge sometimes led to protracted divorce litigation which pushed clients’ costs beyond original estimates, but the report said that clients were too often given poor information about costs, including the lack of estimates. The issue is not specific to divorce, as highlighted separately in another report, this time by the Consumer Panel in its third briefing note on its annual tracker survey, according to which 57 per cent of consumers say they are not getting value for money from their lawyers.

Overall however LeO’s report paints a picture of a profession handling complaints “responsibly”. So much so, in fact, that the number of complaints dropped from 76,000 in 2011-12 to just over 71,000 in 2012-13.  For the accountants at the MoJ, this raises a tricky question: the unit cost per complaint has gone up. So unless more consumers start complaining, LeO’s resources could come under scrutiny.

One obstacle seems to be cultural: that consumers “lack confidence in dealing with what they see as powerful and potentially threatening providers”. LeO has pushed for greater awareness of its service among the general public – there is a reference to the “unprecedented media interest” in the story of Mrs D, who was charged £4,000 for photocopying – but it needs to do more than the occasional splash in the papers to be seen as a part of the legal services chain.

One obvious and much needed change that could help is to extend LeO’s jurisdiction to all organisations providing legal services. At present it only covers organisations or individuals that are regulated as lawyers. This has led to a gaping inconsistency in relation to claims management companies. These are regulated by the Ministry of Justice but fall outside LeO’s scope when it comes to complaints. It is nearly a year since the MoJ said it would start accepting complaints about CMCs in 2013 but no formal proposal has since been forthcoming.

And let’s not talk about wills, the third source of complaint before LeO. The government’s decision last month not to make it a reserved activity will leave a large chunk of the market unregulated and with no complaints body.

All these issues should really have been addressed by the Legal Services Act, but with luck they will be now considered in the review of legal services announced by Helen Grant last week. Although in the current cost-cutting climate, anything that is likely to keep costs at their current level – let alone require an increase – is likely to receive short shrift from Chris Grayling. Then again, there is an election in less than two years.