Legal ombudsman advises against unregulated services
Clients are left powerless when unregulated will-writing and claims management companies make mistakes, and the situation is likely to get worse, the legal ombudsman has warned.
In his first annual report to Parliament since the organisation launched in October 2010, chief legal ombudsman Adam Sampson highlighted current gaps in regulation.
One service that “crops up a lot” is unregulated will-writing firms, he said. “Because of this customers are left with little means of redress when things go wrong.
“We’ve seen similar confusion about claims management companies, with lots of customers believing they’re getting a legal service even though most of the work is carried out by a non-authorised person. Again, we can’t help.”
The difficulties with the current regulatory regime are likely to increase, given the increasing “commoditisation” of legal services and the continuing influence of technology, the report states. The impending introduction of alternative business structures under the Legal Services Act will also “present new challenges at the edges of regulation”.
Sampson said the market shake-up would see legal services provided by large corporations and bundled up with financial services and other products.
“In some cases, the issue might go instead to another ombudsman. In some, Trading Standards” he said.
“Sometimes, there may be no-one in a position to help. There is a huge risk of overlap and confusion here which it is important that the regulators and policy-makers begin to focus on.
“Some firms offer ‘expert’ online legal advice which is often bundled with financial or insurance services, and many of these are backed by large corporations. Naturally, consumers expect the same standard of care as from their local lawyer, but in some cases it’s woefully lacking.”
Conveyancing accounted for one in five of the 4,000 complaints accepted for investigation by the ombudsman, as did family law work. More than 13% of the complaints arose from will-writing and probate. Litigation gave rise to roughly ten per cent of complaints, and so did personal injury work.
The Legal Services Board consumer panel called for will-writing to become a reserved activity, in a report published last week. It conducted a mystery-shopping exercise in which more than a fifth of 64 wills were found to be of inadequate quality.
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