LeO “needs to transform”, his handler said this month. LeO, in this context, is the legal ombudsman and his handler is the chair of the Office for Legal Complaints — which, in turn, reports to the Legal Services Board.
One enhancement — if not quite a transformation — is suggested in a report today by Blind Justice UK, a small charity that bases its research on published data. I’ve covered two of its reports so far. One in April accused law firms of selectively promoting their consumer reviews and another in May suggested that regulators could do more to identify potential defaults.
Its latest research credits LeO for a policy of naming all service-providers involved in complaints that have been resolved by an ombudsman’s final decision. But the report criticises Leo for removing these names after a year. Blind Justice UK has identified nearly 11,500 deleted decisions but it estimates the total to be between 24,000 and 28,000. Only 939 can currently be found online.
Why does that matter? To find out, I thought it was time to interview Edward Romain (pictured), the charity’s founder and chief executive, for any episode of A Lawyer Talks.
I’ll be putting his concerns to the legal ombudsman and the Office for Legal Complaints chair after the summer holidays. In the meantime, LeO and his handler have provided me with this comment:
We are currently consulting on a number of proposals covering our scheme rules, case fees and the principle of publishing ombudsman decisions in full. The consultation seeks views on whether publication of all ombudsman final decisions would help consumers make more informed choices, encourage learning and improvement across the legal sector and align LeO with best practice across other ombudsman schemes.
We welcome responses from all interested stakeholders and will carefully consider the feedback received before reaching any decisions. As that work progresses, we will also consider the wider issues that flow from any changes to our publication approach, including how decisions are made available and for how long.
My podcast interview, as always, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.
