The Legal Ombudsman has published the kind of annual report that says the ship is turning while politely admitting it is still taking on water.
Its latest figures show a service improving, but not quickly enough to make anyone unbutton the champagne. New complaints rose 36% in the year to 31 March, from 10,447 to 14,259. The number resolved was 8,199. That is not a queue. That is a queue with its own weather system.
LeO’s timeliness targets tell the story in numbers, which is rarely kind to optimism. For low-complexity complaints, it aims to resolve 80% within 325 days. It managed 28%, up from 24%. Medium-complexity and high-complexity complaints did better than last year, with 59% and 64% resolved within 500 days. The target is still 80%.
Put down the spreadsheet. The plain English version is this: LeO is moving faster, but complaints are arriving faster still.
LeO deals with complaints about poor service by lawyers. It is not the SRA. The SRA regulates professional conduct and can discipline solicitors. LeO looks at service failure: bad communication, delay, unclear costs, poor complaint handling, and whether the client should get an apology, refund, compensation or some other remedy.
That distinction matters to regulators. It matters much less to clients. A person who has paid for legal help and been ignored does not stand in the kitchen thinking, “Ah, this is a service-quality matter rather than a conduct issue.” They think the lawyer has vanished, the bill makes no sense, and the system has started speaking in laminated phrases.
The report does contain good news. Nearly 52% of cases were resolved by early resolution within 90 days. Early resolution is the sensible bit of the system: the part where everyone tries to fix the problem before it becomes a formal paper mountain with email chains and sighing.
But the later-stage figures are harder reading. Where cases reached a decision, LeO found poor service in 72%. It found evidence of unreasonable complaints handling in 46%. That second number should travel straight to managing partners, ideally without stopping for brand approval.
Complaints are not customer-service confetti. They cost time, goodwill and money. They also tell firms where the pipes are leaking. A complaint about delay may reveal poor supervision. A complaint about costs may show weak client-care letters. A complaint about silence may say more about workload than manners.
LeO has already signalled changes to its scheme rules and more pressure on firms whose complaints reach formal decisions. The message is not subtle. Firms are expected to fix service failures early, not bundle them off to the Ombudsman like unwanted furniture.
There is an access-to-justice problem here too. Clients who complain about lawyers are often already bruised by the original legal problem. Divorce, probate, housing, injury, debt, employment, immigration: these are not leisure activities. When the complaint process then takes months, sometimes longer, the system creates a second dispute on top of the first.
Delay is not administrative drizzle. It changes behaviour. People give up. They accept poor outcomes. They stop trusting advice. Some never complain at all because the route looks too slow before they even start.
LeO deserves credit for improvement. Direction matters. But direction is not arrival. A complaints body missing its main timeliness targets is still asking too much patience from people who have already spent enough of it.
For law firms, the lesson is practical. The first complaint is not nuisance correspondence. It is a warning light. Ignore it in month one and it may return in month twelve wearing a regulator’s badge and carrying a cost order.
Complaints handling is now compliance with a customer-service accent. Firms that treat it as admin are volunteering for expensive tuition.
Author: Marcelo Williams
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