Carrots and sticks

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and its Solicitors’ Code of Conduct will impose a huge change in the way firms handle complaints after July 2007. The appearance of more detailed rules and guidelines to replace the current loose provisions should benefit those practices that use the opportunity to review their relationships with their clients. For the rest, the new rules could easily become a stick with which the SRA might choose to beat them.

Outgoing rules

Solicitors’ Practice Rule 15 requires a firm to operate a complaints handling procedure in accordance with the Client Care Code. Paragraph 7(b) of that insists that every principal in private practice or recognised body ensures that the practice or body has a complaints procedure, follows it, that clients are told who to contact with concerns about service and that a copy of the procedure is given to them on request. The rules say nothing of the procedure’s required content. This is not a demanding rule.

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