Legal Ombudsman: free service that resolves your complaints against solicitors

The Legal Ombudsman has strong powers to force your lawyer to compensate you for poor service. And it won't cost you a penny!

The Legal Ombudsman for England and Wales resolves your complaints against solicitors. It's little more than a baby, as it's just entered its third year of existence. Although it's had very few column inches to make people aware of it, it has already handled a good number of cases: 5,000 last year and 7,000 the year before.

Scotland has a somewhat similar service in the form of the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, but it's a few years older. The Law Society of Northern Ireland is the nearest thing that Northern Ireland has to an ombudsman.

40%+ success rate for complainants

I counted the first 350 complaints from last year and found that the Legal Ombudsman had ordered legal firms to make good their mistakes between 40% and 50% of the time. These orders might be just for the firm to apologise, or it might force the company to do more work to put things right, to reduce or refund fees, or to compensate the complainant.

If you accept the Legal Ombudsman's solution, it's binding on both parties and the Ombudsman states that you're not allowed to take further legal action on that specific matter. If you reject the Legal Ombudsman's ruling, you can still take the legal firm to court. The firm cannot reject the ruling.

The biggest complaint areas the Legal Ombudsman deals with are family law (divorce), conveyancing (home buying and selling), and Wills and probate, but other areas attracting quite a few complaints include personal injury, criminal law and litigation (which covers a wide range of legal matters, such as boundary disputes, noise pollution from nearby power generators, breach of contract by a shop, or anything else where you ask a court to settle a dispute).

The biggest complaint in most of areas of law was failure to follow instructions. Complaints about costs, or lack of information about costs, was also a frequent complaint.

Which legal firms are the worst?

The Legal Ombudsman reveals the number of complaints against each legal firm – even if they have had no complaints against them that the Ombudsman had to resolve.

There have been too few complaints to build a picture of which firms we should worry about, but it's something for you to consider looking at in the years ahead before choosing a legal professional. Bear in mind that good, large firms could have more complaints against them than mediocre small firms, and some areas of law are more emotive when there's more money at stake (divorce and conveyancing) so they're more likely to attract complaints.

The Legal Ombudsman does not log complaints that are resolved informally before it needs to make a final decision. Some of the worst firms could, therefore, wait until you complain to the Legal Ombudsman but then jump in to offer you better service or compensation, so that it doesn't have a black mark publicly recorded against it.

Attempted property sale

Let's take a look at a few examples about how the Legal Ombudsman resolves disputes, starting with the case of Ms L, who paid £75 towards a fee to a solicitor's firm for selling her house. Although she paid up front, she was assured it was a no-completion, no-fee deal.

Ms L then received little information from the solicitor. After numerous calls and emails she learned the buyer had pulled out. The firm told her it would not refund the fee, despite the no completion deal, and that she would even have to pay an extra £25 if she wanted her file back.

Ms L complained to the Legal Ombudsman, who agreed it was a no-completion, no-fee deal, and that the firm's communication had been poor. The contract with Ms L stated that it could charge for the release of its file, but the Ombudsman said it should have responded to her complaint about it anyway.

The Legal Ombudsman ordered the firm to pay £500 compensation.

£6,000 saved in divorce fees

Mrs I's divorce took three years. After one-and-a-half years, she was told the bill stood at £5,000. Despite asking for further updates on costs on more than one occasion, she didn't receive any until she suddenly received a bill for £15,000, which jumped to £20,000 even after she complained to the firm.

The Legal Ombudsman found the firm had failed to provide the cost updates Mrs I had asked for and that it had delayed the divorce. It ordered the firm to reduce the bill to £14,000 and to finish any outstanding work free of charge. Mrs I accepted the Legal Ombudsman's decision.

£9,000 extra for life insurance delays

Miss V was the beneficiary of a £500,000 life insurance payout on her partner's death. She wanted to use the money to pay off her mortgage. Her firm of solicitors caused delays in her receiving the money, which led to her paying thousands in avoidable mortgage interest.

The Legal Ombudsman ordered the firm to pay her £9,500 partly to cover the mortgage interest she had paid, partly for the loss of interest she would have earned on investing the remainder of the payout, and also as compensation for the inconvenience caused.

Legal delays result in missed opportunity

Mr B was made redundant and thought he had a case against his employer. The legal firm dithered, failed to inform him of the correct deadline to file a claim in court, left it too late to proceed with the claim, and then failed to respond to his complaints for seven months.

The Legal Ombudsman ordered the firm to refund the fees and waive unpaid fees, as well as to pay £500 in compensation.

Time limits for complaining

You should try to complain to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of receiving the solicitor firm's final response to your complaint. You must also complain within six years of the event that you're complaining about, or within three years of when you should have been aware there was something to complain about.

However, at the moment the event must have happened on or after 6th October 2010.

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New 66099 Rant & Rave hotline sends complaints direct to offenders

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