Following its consultation exercise in summer 2005, when it will announce its plans to reform arrangements for handling complaints about la…

The Scottish Executive will introducelegislation this session to establish a new independent body to handle such complaints.Our policy is that complaints from clients should be dealt with wherever possibleby the law firm or lawyer who provided the service in question. The new body, the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, will act as a gateway to receive those complaintsabout lawyers which cannot be resolved at source. The new body will take over thehandling of complaints about inadequate professional service from the legal professionalbodies, the Scottish Legal Services Ombudsman and the Scottish Solicitors DisciplineTribunal.
The legal professional bodiesand their discipline tribunals will retain responsibility for professional discipline.The commission will accordingly refer complaints about the conduct of lawyers tothe professional bodies for investigation, but will have powers to oversee the wayin which conduct complaints are handled. The commission will be led by a board whichwill have a non-lawyer majority and a non-lawyer chair.
The arrangements we propose recognisethe strong message from the response to our consultation that there should be anindependent complaints handling body and that its powers should be vested in a boardrather than a single officeholder. The new system aims to build public confidencein the system for handling complaints against lawyers while the commission willalso have the role of promoting good practice in complaints handling by law firmsand practitioners. The commission will be funded by the legal profession througha general levy on legal practitioners and a levy on complaints. Vexatious or frivolouscomplaints will be sifted out and will not be the subject of a levy.