UK Law Society Leadership Slams Manzoor

by Robin Pilgrim, LawAndTax-News.com, London

06 April 2006

The leadership of the UK's Law Society this week responded angrily to comments made by the Legal Services Ombudsman (LSO) and Legal Services Complaints Commissioner (LSCC), Zahida Manzoor in a recent interview.

Speaking to The Lawyer last month, Ms Manzoor suggested that the Law Society is "letting down the profession", adding:

"If it's spending £38m on complaints handling, where's the money going?"

Although she gave the Law Society measured praise for the progress which has been made in improving its complaints handling record, she observed in her interview that:

"There are substantial delays in the way the Law Society handles its casework."

"The Bar Council is better at it. I think the Bar Council continually tries and reviews and improves on its processes; invariably I find that it does what it has said. There have been times when I've thought I don't understand why the Law Society finds this terribly difficult."

Responding to the remarks on Tuesday, Kevin Martin, president of the Law Society, stated that:

”During the past three years, the Law Society has worked hard to establish a constructive working relationship with Zahida Manzoor, who is both the Legal Services Ombudsman and the Legal Services Complaints Commissioner. Throughout, our aim has been to achieve major long-term improvements in both the timeliness and quality of complaints handling that would benefit consumers of legal services."

"It is regrettable that rarely does she give the Law Society due credit for the massive improvements in complaints handling which have occurred since the turn of the century.”

Janet Paraskeva, Law Society chief executive, added:

”Things were never destined to be easy: nobody expects their watchdog to do anything but bark. But the extension of the appointment of the LSO as LSCC seems to have paved the way for the statistics to be used in a way that does not reflect the true situation. Instead of charting what has been a success story, and a success which we had hoped to share with LSCC, she appears to be deliberately damaging the potential of our new Consumer Complaints Service and that cannot be in the interests of consumers.”

”The decision to give the Ombudsman the additional role of Complaints Commissioner has caused us immense concern from the start. As Ombudsman, Ms Manzoor assesses the Law Society's handling of individual complaints that have been referred to her. As Complaints Commissioner, she sets performance targets for the Law Society. Those targets include the quality of complaints handling – as assessed by her in her role as Ombudsman."

"This is a clear conflict of interest: Ms Manzoor is allowed to act as police, judge and jury. An independent review recommended that the roles should not be combined in the same person: the government ignored that advice.”

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