The Legal Ombudsman
Building trust and confidence
Rebecca Marsh describes her experiences to date in the role of Chief Ombudsman at the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) and work plans for the rest of LeO's business year.
About the author
Rebecca Marsh is Chief Ombudsman at LeO.
I have spent the last 15 years of my working life focusing on ombudsmanry and complaints handling. In that time, my passion for getting to the right decisions in our case work has only grown. It is important that decisions are made in the right way and that lessons are shared from these experiences.
Just six months here at LeO has re-emphasised to me what an asset it is to be stimulated by what you do, and I speak not only for myself. As Chief Ombudsman, I am in touch with every part of our organisation, and see, on a daily basis, the interest so many of our staff have for the work in this sector and across the whole range of areas of law.
Having worked at the Independent Police Complaints Commission and then the Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman, I came to LeO just as it was publishing its annual business plan and was in the final stages of the development and implementation of a new casemanagement system, so you can imagine how busy these first few months have been. The focus of our business plan last year was modernising aspects of our work, such as IT and telephony. Now these are in place, we are focused on improving performance and consistently demonstrating high-quality service to you and to consumers.
Some of you will also be aware that the main challenges for LeO over the past 12 months have been to get complaints investigated within a reasonable period of time, and to meet the high standards of service we set for ourselves. I know, and so do our Board and senior management, that this has to improve. Legal service providers will be less likely to trust the decisions we make, or the feedback we offer, if we do not get it right ourselves.
So, quality including timeliness and clear decision-making are my priorities. This also means ensuring that everyone knows what good and poor service look like, and that you can learn, and take confidence from, our casework.
To be clear, however, our work is not about imposing a decision on parties, but understanding the real source of conflict between people and helping to resolve this. I am encouraging our investigators to take this approach, emphasising the importance of bringing both parties with them on the casework journey; if, at the end of it, the parties do not agree with the decision, they at least understand how and why we came to it. You will see that I really enjoy the casework aspect of my role, and I take a particular interest in the quality and robustness of our decision-making.
I have really enjoyed working with the staff at LeO, many of whom are knowledgeable and skilled in their work. We are doing more to support the ongoing development of our staff through enhanced career pathways and the upskilling of employees. LeO staff have helped me to understand LeO’s work, and where we need to alter and improve the business process, and I want to make sure that we support and develop them as well. They are committed to building on what we already do well and improving our service for all our customers. And I know that we do a good job for both consumers and the legal profession. I have included two examples of recent cases we have resolved to highlight this (see boxes).
We recently helped to resolve a case on behalf of Mrs A.
Her husband had died and the solicitor, who was also the executor, was administering the estate. It was not the most straightforward estate, as it included both businesses and properties which needed to be valued.
Mrs A complained to us because the estate had received penalties and interest from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) because of the late submission of the IHT 400. An IHT 400 form needs to be completed if inheritance tax needs to be paid on an estate.
Our investigation found that the solicitor had sent in the form two and a half years after Mrs A’s husband had died, when it should be submitted within 12 months. We concluded that there were not any reasonable reasons for the delay. A valuation of the estate had been available within the 12 months, and so the form should have been submitted. This meant that the firm had provided poor service, and should reimburse the estate the HMRC penalty and interest costs which had arisen. In total, this came to around £10,000.
This case was also interesting because the executor had worked at two firms during the administration of the estate. A firm is responsible for the actions of its employees, and because the period of delay covered his time at both firms we concluded that the reimbursement needed to be split between the two.
In addition, the second firm had closed by the time Mrs A found out about the complaint, and so Mrs A was unsure what to do and needed our help to sort out the situation. As the solicitor had moved firms, Mrs A was not getting a clear response to her complaint and, without our involvement, it is likely that the estate would not have been able to recover the HMRC fines, which were a direct result of the poor service.
Mr and Mrs P had instructed a solicitor to help them resolve a neighbour dispute. After a while, they decided to seek a second opinion and ultimately chose to instruct a new solicitor. Mr and Mrs P requested that their file was sent over to the new solicitor. They had paid an invoice a month prior to this, and thought that they were up to date with the costs.
When it was clear that Mr and Mrs P had in fact instructed a new solicitor, the firm sent a final invoice and issued a lien over the final part of the file. This meant that the firm would not release the whole file until the outstanding costs had been paid.
Mr and Mrs P complained that the lien meant that the new firm was delayed in starting work on the dispute, and that the previous firm should not have issued an invoice as it had been disinstructed.
When we looked at the case, the conversations about getting a second opinion had taken place over the telephone, and so we relied on attendance notes to gain an understanding of what had happened. It was clear from the notes that Mr and Mrs P had not stopped instructing the firm, and had only said that they were seeking a second opinion. It was also evident that the firm had done work on the case since it had last invoiced Mr and Mrs P, and so was within its rights to send a final invoice and request that it be paid before releasing the full file.
This is an example of a fairly everyday occurrence in legal services, which arises because of a lack of understanding about how costs can be charged. We were able to explain the process, and make sure that the solicitors’ firm was able to recover costs that were rightly owed to it.
Beyond the casework, I also firmly believe that ombudsman schemes have an important role in ensuring service providers understand what consumers hold to be good service. If the casework is done well, then we have the ability to provide you with relevant and timely feedback, backed up with evidence, which supports your understanding of complaints handling. I believe that this is vital to the legal sector, not least so that providers can attract and retain customers.
In fact, research from the Legal Services Consumer Panel confirms this, highlighting that consumers’ trust of service providers is much lower than in other sectors, while our own research shows that consumers can be wary of raising concerns about their service providers.* Some are concerned about the potential negative impact on their own case; others get to the end of their instruction and wash their hands of it, even if they feel they have had a bad experience.
At the same time, it is a challenging environment for legal service providers. Complaints, though not always welcome, can tell us a lot about the areas of our businesses that may not be working well or need better explanation. We need to make sure that you know what good service is, and the role it plays in retaining and attracting new customers.
It is important that we continue to hear from legal service providers. You represent 50 per cent of our customers, and while we may occasionally have a difference of view in some areas, the most important thing to me is that we have a conversation about it. So, I look forward to working with you all, preferably through sharing learning and feedback rather than through our complaints process, and I look forward to some interesting discussions.
* See Tracker Survey 2017. Brieifng note: how consumers are using legal services. available at: https://tinyurl.com/yaqoq6qt, and see: Research into the experiences and effectiveness of solicitors' first tier complaints handling processes. Research commissioned by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and Legal Ombudsman, available at: https://tinyurl.com/ya5u2yv4