Scottish Legal Services Ombud

2.Main Content

Scottish Legal Services Ombud

This page contains information about the Scottish Legal Services Ombudsman, including:
What it does
Advantages and disadvantages
Which complaints are eligible?
When can a complaint be considered?
Cost
Timescale
Procedure
Outcomes
Good practice
The future

What it does
The Scottish Legal Services Ombudsman investigates complaints about the way the Law Society of Scotland and the Faculty of Advocates (the professional bodies) have handled a complaint about a legal practitioner. Users cannot complain directly to the Scottish Legal Services Ombudsman about a solicitor or advocate - there is more information below about how the complaints ladder works under When can a complaint be considered?

Complaints about legal services in England and Wales are dealt with by the Legal Services Ombudsman.

Complaints about Legal Aid or the administration of the courts in Scotland are dealt with by the Scottish Public Services Ombud.
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Advantages

it is independent of the Law Society of Scotland and the Faculty of Advocates and of Scottish government
it is free
it can result in the complaint being re-investigated by the professional body
it is possible to get compensation for inconvenience, distress or loss
it can lead to improvements in complaints-handling procedures within the professional bodies

Disadvantages

the ombudsman cannot investigate the original complaint about a solicitor or advocate and cannot overturn a decision made by a professional body
the ombudsman can make recommendations (called an ‘opinion’) but not binding decisions
it is the final rung in a long complaints process

The aim of the scheme is to look at whether an earlier complaint has been dealt with fairly by the professional body concerned, and to influence good practice in complaints handling. The ombudsman cannot re-investigate a complaint if you are not happy with the original decision.
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Which complaints are eligible?
The ombudsman can consider complaints about the way the Law Society of Scotland or the Faculty of Advocates has handled or is handling a complaint about a legal practitioner. Complaints about the professional body include:

poor communication
delay
inadequate or incomplete investigation
refusing to investigate a complaint
failure to take account of relevant information
not explaining the conclusions reached

The ombudsman cannot investigate complaints about people and organisations not within her remit, including:

solicitors and advocates
Scottish Legal Aid Board
Scottish Court Service
individual sheriffs and judges
Scottish Solicitors Discipline Tribunal

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When can a complaint be considered?
If you want to make a complaint about a solicitor or an advocate, the first step is to complain directly to the legal practitioner, or to the firm.

If you are not happy with the way in which they respond to your complaint, you can contact the relevant professional body – the Law Society of Scotland or the Faculty of Advocates. They will investigate the way in which your complaint has been dealt with. If you do not want to complain directly to the people involved, you can approach the professional body directly.

At this stage, if you are still unhappy with the way the professional body has handled your complaint, you can ask the Scottish Legal Services Ombudsman to investigate. This must be within six months.

If you want to make a complaint to the ombudsman before the investigation by the professional body has finished, the ombudsman will decide if she should become involved at that stage. If she decides not to become involved she will explain her decision.
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Cost
The scheme is free to complainants.

If the ombudsman upholds your complaint and awards you compensation, she can ask the professional body to pay your non-legal costs such as post, telephone and photocopying. This is unlikely to be a large sum.
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Timescale
In the last year (2006-07) the average time for dealing with a complaint has been reduced from 17 weeks to 5 weeks.
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Procedure
Complaints must be in writing, but that includes email and fax. If you prefer, there is a complaint form on the ombudsman’s website that you can use. You must include:

your name
your postal address
any other contact details such as phone or email
what concerns you about the way your complaint was handled

It will also help if you include:

the name of the firm or practitioner you are complaining about
the professional body’s case reference number
the date of the professional body’s decision letter

There is no need to send any copies of letters and documents at this stage.

The ombudsman should contact you within 5 days to let you know whether she can investigate your complaint. If your complaint is accepted, she will get a copy of the case file from the professional body, and begin the investigation.
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Outcomes
Once the ombudsman has completed her investigation, she will issue an opinion, which is a written report. She might conclude that the professional body handled the complaint adequately, in which case no further action is taken.

If the ombudsman finds that the professional body has not investigated the complaint adequately, she can recommend that it:

provides you with more information
investigates the complaint further
reconsiders the complaint

She can also recommend that the professional body ‘uses its powers in relation to the practitioner’. This means that if she believes that a solicitor might have been guilty of professional misconduct, she can report the case to the Scottish Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal.

A professional body has three months to decide if it will accept the ombudsman’s recommendations. In 2006-7, the ombudsman dealt with 529 complaints about the way the Law Society of Scotland handled complaints itself. Of her written opinions, 57% were satisfactory, 15% were generally satisfactory, and 28% were critical. The Law Society refused to accept her recommendations in only 2 cases.

If the professional body does not accept the recommendations, the ombudsman can publish an announcement giving her views and the professional body’s views. The ombudsman does not name the complainant or the practitioner in such announcements.

There is no route of appeal against the ombudsman’s recommendations.
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Good practice
One of the advantages of an ombudsman’s investigation is the potential to influence good practice within the professional bodies. For example, during the year 2006-7, the ombudsman has noted the following examples of improved practice:

Policies for diverse needs
Openness of procedures
Good record keeping
Significant improvement in meeting case time target of 43 weeks
Increasing willingness over the year to try to resolve difficult issues by dialogue

She has also identified a number of areas which need improvement, including paying more attention to the actual problems which complainants have identified, and putting more resources into trying to resolve problems through explanation or conciliation at an earlier stage.
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The future
It is expected that a new body, the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission (SLCC), will come into operation from mid–late 2008. The SLCC will be a “one stop shop” for complaints about legal practitioners in Scotland where the problem cannot be sorted out with the service providers concerned. It will be completely independent of the legal profession. In the meantime, the Ombudsman, the Law Society of Scotland and the Faculty of Advocates will continue to operate under the current complaints framework
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February 2008