Ombudsman must publish decisions in full, says consumer panel

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) must move more quickly towards publishing its decisions in full, according to the Legal Services Consumer Panel.

The panel, responding to the draft strategy for 2024-27 published by the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC), the board that oversees LeO, said it was “unsatisfactory that a clear roadmap for action has not been outlined”. It wanted to see “timelines, milestones, stakeholder engagement and consultation periods embedded into the process”.

While the panel commended the OLC for a “well-considered strategy which has the potential to transform how consumers experience the Legal Ombudsman”, it put pressure on LeO to prioritise publishing decisions, along with giving more attention to third-party complaints.

The panel acknowledged that publishing decisions would not be straightforward and accepted there were administrative barriers and burdens that complicated moves towards it, but said that “none of these challenges are insurmountable”. It considered that, while there were risks, “there is sufficient mitigation to enable this to happen and bring LeO more in line with their peers”.

The panel noted that LeO was “an outlier” amongst comparable ombudsmen that do publish their decisions in full.

The panel said LeO was unable to investigate third-party complaints where the people losing out were not the lawyer’s client, for instance where there were delays or mistakes by the other side’s lawyer in a conveyancing transaction or disputes over legal fees when someone agreed to pay the costs of the other side.

It argued that “in certain situations, third parties should be able to complain to the Legal Ombudsman and obtain a remedy for the harm they suffer”.

While not advocating for every third-party complaint to be investigated, the panel said “the current system is opaque” and that it would like LeO “to set out clearly the circumstances in which it does and does not accept third-party complaints” and “be transparent about how many third-party complaints it turns away, on a yearly basis, including the themes it is gathering from these complaints”.

The panel stressed that it was “not calling for new consumer rights, but a more coherent and streamlined manner of dealing with legal complaints” that empowers people to use LeO to obtain redress instead of going to court.