Stories from our annual report...
The way services are packaged and explained to consumers is critical. The difficulties with the current regulatory regime are already apparent and likely to increase, given the increasing 'commoditisation' of legal services and the continuing influence of technology.- Contact us
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The impending introduction of Alternative Business Structures - under which businesses owned by non-lawyers will be authorised to provide legal, and other, services - later in 2011, and the consequent regulatory reforms which they will herald, will clearly also have an impact on the position of consumers and present new challenges at the edges of regulation. The regulators are keenly aware of these issues and we look forward to working with them to help them refine their solutions.
In the meantime, we have been encouraged by the positive relationship we've been able to develop with some of the business that are likely to play a much more prominent role in the provision of legal services in future:
In the meantime, we have been encouraged by the positive relationship we've been able to develop with some of the business that are likely to play a much more prominent role in the provision of legal services in future:
Mrs M went to a well-known high street retail and banking chain in April 2009 to get help with administering her father's will. She trusted the company implicitly.
Her father's estate, she was told, would take about six months to sort out. But it was a very different story 18 months later, when still nothing had been done. Mrs M had tried to find out why, but no one at the company's legal services department appeared to know anything about her father's will.
She'd already been given the run-around when, in March 2010, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) got in touch to say that there had been an overpayment of benefits and that she was liable for the repayment. Her solicitor told her – quite wrongly – that the house would have to be sold if she couldn't pay. If the lawyer had been up to scratch, they would have known that the DWP calculates overpayments on the basis of income, not property values. Mrs M looked into it herself and found that her solicitor had actually been in touch with the DWP on a number of occasions since the previous summer – a full seven months before she first learned about the overpayment. Indeed, the DWP had already checked her bank account to see what she was worth, but Mrs M was never informed. And her solicitor claimed he knew nothing about it.
She complained to the firm and was offered a 10% reduction in their fee, which she refused. They upped it to £1,000 and, after further wrangling and our support, made a final offer of £1,500. This was in recognition of what they admitted were significant and serious service failures on their part.
But they had originally told Mrs M she couldn't complain to the Legal Ombudsman. Being a corporation and not a firm of solicitors, they said, meant they were out of our jurisdiction. We disagreed and decided to continue with the investigation. The company eventually accepted our intervention and agreed to an informal resolution, resulting in the award of £1,500 plus VAT in compensation.