Manzoor sets 'achievable' complaints targets

Unhappy clients should expect a speedier response to complaints about solicitors under new targets set by the Legal Services Complaints Commissioner, Zahida Manzoor.

The commissioner wants the Law Society to ensure that 88% of consumers receive a substantive response within 45 days over the next year. Manzoor says it is not unreasonable for a consumer to expect to receive that letter within a month and a half.

“This does not require the complaint to be investigated, it only requires the Law Society to accurately identify and communicate all the issues, specific to the consumer’s individual circumstances to enable the complaint to progress,” she says. Another agreed aim is that by the end of March 2008, there should be no more than 65 cases that have been open for 12 months or more.

Deborah Evans, chief executive of the Consumer Complaints Service (CCS), which is now responsible for handling consumer complaints about solicitors, says: “The targets have been set following an extremely constructive period during which the commissioner’s office and the CCS worked closely together.”

This united approach is in marked contrast to chilly relations in the past between the Law Society and the commissioner’s office, during which the society was fined more than £250,000—later reduced to £220,000—for submitting an inadequate complaints-handling plan.