LAW ROGUES SURVEY: Consultation launched by Scottish Legal Complaints Commission - What should lawyers & clients expect from solicitors’ regulator run by vested legal interests?

Legal regulator seeks consumer & legal views on ‘new’ strategy. SCOTLAND’S ‘independent’ regulator of complaints about solicitors – the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission (SLCC) has launched a consultation seeking views from the public, clients & the legal profession on a strategy for the next four years.

The SLCC – created by the Scottish Government in 2008 at a cost of over two million pounds of taxpayers money, was originally planned to be a single gateway for all complaints relating to the legal profession, and a break from endemic dishonesty and corruption in the system of self regulation of solicitors – managed by the Law Society of Scotland.

However, the past eight years of ‘managing’ public complaints about solicitors has brought few headline success cases for clients of rogue solicitors solicitors – despite a staggering £20 million pounds of clients’ funds in the form of complaints levies thrown at the widely criticised pro-lawyer SLCC.

After eight years of doing little to raise standards in Scotland’s legal profession, the SLCC now claims : “We want to continue that journey: looking at greater efficiency and effectiveness (especially around early resolution); how we can share trends and learning from the many complaints we have dealt with to inform better practice; increasing our visibility; improving our own customer service; and drawing on best practice principles in regulation and consumer policy.  In our strategy we discuss why this approach is good for consumers, and good for the sector – high confidence in legal services plays a vital role in sustaining and growing the market.”

However, a recent media investigation uncovered most of the staff and investigators at the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission are in-fact families, friends & business associates of solicitors, reported here: 'Independent' Scots legal watchdog consists of solicitors’ husbands, wives, sons, daughters, cousins, friends, & employers.

And in December last year, the commission announced it would publish selected details of cases the regulator had investigated in relation to corrupt lawyers.  NO NAME, NO SHAME: Scottish Legal Complaints Commission will protect identifies of rogue solicitors & dishonest law firms.

Pointedly, the SLCC refused to name or shame any solicitor or law firm involved in complaints and scams – leaving consumers in the dark on lawyers and their law firms who are the subject of frequent complaints for the same offences against clients & consumers of legal services in Scotland.

The latest annual report from the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, 2014-2015 SLCC Annual report - published in December 2015 - indicated the regulator had paid out £401,000 to victims of rogue or corrupt solicitors, reported here: ROGUES PAY: 1009 cases of rogue lawyers reported to ‘independent’ legal regulator as SLCC claim mediation success up, £401K awarded to clients of dodgy solicitors.

However, the figure of £401K is thought to be a tiny fraction of the amount of fraud involving solicitors and their clients every year, demonstrated alone in one on-going case brought to the attention of the media where a sole solicitor is involved in the disappearance of around £500,000 from a trust.

Now, seeking what some in the legal profession are calling a “51st shade of grey”, the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission has announced  a consultation on a new strategy for the next four years, aimed at putting consumer understanding at its heart.

The draft strategy outlines a number of key priorities for the SLCC including work with consumer groups, lawyers and professional bodies such as the Law Society of Scotland and the Faculty of Advocates.

This work includes greater efficiency and effectiveness in complaints handling, increased visibility for the SLCC and considering whether the current regulatory set up delivers effective protection and redress for consumers.

SLCC consultation 2016  – Your views count.

Speaking with regard to the consultation, Bill Brackenridge, SLCC Chair said,  “At a time when consumer rights and redress are very much on the agenda for all sectors, this strategy lays out the path to an even more effective and efficient legal complaints handling system, where we build on the learning from complaints we’ve already undertaken in the last seven years.”

“We’re currently in a strong position and now is a great time to start planning for the years ahead – to our 10th anniversary in 2018 and beyond.  We think we can deliver even greater value to consumers and to lawyers, but working in partnership is a key part of this.  We’re looking forward to hearing what our stakeholders want to contribute to the refreshed approach we’re laying out.”

Former Law Society director, Neil Stevenson  - appointed SLCC Chief Executive during 2015 added, “One area we think will be of particular interest is focus on the consumer journey – we tend to talk about regulation from the perspective of the pieces of legislation, or the institutions involved. With the strategy we’re consulting on, we’ve lifted techniques used with patients in the NHS, and used them to examine the pathways along which lawyers and consumers experience regulation.  It makes you look very differently at the current landscape – for example, should a single complaint travel across as many as four organisations to be resolved? And even if that is the best way of handling it, how do you work together to give the consumer a single explanation of the system and the different stages? ”

“Personally, another project I see as vital is work to look at situations where we decide a client has suffered poor service, but the firm is being disbanded and the client never gets the refund in fees we award.  We think this undermines confidence in the regulation of the sector, and want to work with others to look for solutions.  We believe clients should be sure they will always get redress when things go wrong, and we know lawyers also want to be able to give this reassurance, but that’s not a promise that can always be made at the moment.   Of course, the purpose of the consultation is to see what focus and projects others think are important, and we’d really encourage debate and input.” 

Submit your questions, comments and responses to consult@scottishlegalcomplaints.org.uk.

The deadline for responses is Friday 11 March 2016.

The SLCC’s budget and operating plan for 2016-2017 are also out for consultation. All documents relating to the consultation can also be viewed on the SLCC’s website at the following links

Draft Strategy for 2016 - 2020 (PDF, 1.3 MB)  Draft Operating plan for 2016-2017 (PDF, 715 KB) Draft Budget and proposed levies for 2016-2017 (PDF, 847 KB)  Consultation questions,  on which we would specially value your views (PDF, 705 KB)

Previous media investigations, reports and coverage of issues relating to the SLCC can be found here: Scottish Legal Complaints Commission - A history of pro-lawyer regulation.

CREDIBILITY KNOCKS : New £313-a-day Chair of Scottish Legal Complaints Commission claims 'anti-client' regulator will be ‘more effective’ in dealing with crooked lawyers

New £313-a-day Chair for Scottish Legal Complaints Commission. THE widely disrespected Scottish Legal Complaints Commission (SLCC), the ‘single gateway’ for all complaints made by clients against Scottish solicitors, has a new Chair with the announcement of the appointment of Bill Brackenridge, who takes over the £313 a day position of what many observers now accept is little more than a “front company” for the Law Society of Scotland.

Mr Brackenridge claims the SLCC, with its annual budget of nearly £3 million pounds, paid for by client fees to solicitors, will be made more effective in dealing with complaints and will encourage improved standards in the legal profession under his leadership. Mr Brackenridge replaces Jane Irvine, the SLCC’s first Chair,and former Scottish Legal Services Ombudsman, who retired from her position on 31 December 2012.

The SLCC announced the appointment of Mr Brackenridge last week in a low key Press Release. The SLCC said Mr Brackenridge will bring “considerable Corporate Governance experience to the SLCC”, on the basis that as a management consultant for 25 years he has extensively advised public and private sector clients.  Among his former appointments, Bill Brackenridge has served as a non-Executive Director on Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd and on NHS Highland, chairing the Argyll & Bute CHP for five years.  For six years he chaired the Board of the Scottish Ambulance Service.  He comes to the SLCC aiming to build on its formative years and intent upon developing positive relationships with its stakeholders.

Mr Brackenridge said : "I'm pleased to be joining the SLCC at such an important time in its development. We're now established as the gateway for all legal complaints in Scotland but there's much more for us to do to build trust and confidence in legal services. I'm looking forward to working with the team to make us even more effective and influential in dealing with complaints and in encouraging improved standards through our powers of guidance and oversight. The legal market is changing. Our hard-won experience will contribute to maintaining and strengthening public trust and confidence in buying and using legal services."

Omitted from the SLCC’s Press Statement, it is also known Mr Brackenridge was appointed by Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to the Vale of Leven Monitoring Group which was set up to advise NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde on the future of the Vale of Leven Hospital in West Dunbartonshire and modernisation of health services at the hospital.

However, during Mr Brackenridge’s tenure at the Vale of Leven Monitoring Group, it is worth noting and perhaps of considerable concern, that eleven lay members from the Vale of Leven Monitoring Group resigned their positions in a mass resignation, claiming their views were being ignored by the health board after a number of decisions were apparently taken by the Health Board contrary to input from the group’s lay members.

At the time of the mass resignation by the lay members, Mr Brackenridge in his capacity as Chair, told a meeting of the Vale of Leven Monitoring Group he was "disappointed" by the resignation of 11 lay members. However, the incident was widely reported in the media, with opposition politicians calling for Mr Brackenridge’s group’s disbandment, on the basis it had “no credibility”.

It may well be worth noting that Mr Brackenridge now finds himself heading a legal complaints regulator also well known for its lack of credibility.

The Scottish Government’s similarly low key announcement of Mr Brackenridge’s appointment, made by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, without a personal comment, claimed “The SLCC also promotes and advises on good complaint handling and makes recommendations to promote good legal practice in Scotland. The SLCC aims to resolve complaints quickly and effectively.”

However, some cases brought to the attention of Diary of Injustice appear to show the SLCC has told some clients it may be up to EIGHT MONTHS before their complaint is assigned to an investigator, while other cases have shown the SLCC is refusing to consider any evidence submitted by clients to challenge spurious claims made by solicitors who have the backing of organisations such as the Legal Defence Union to ‘persuade’ the SLCC to drop cases “on demand” as one insider put it.