The Government last week gave the Law Society a 'final chance' to improve its complaints handling or be stripped of its regulatory powers after meeting only one of its end-of-year targets set by the Lord Chancellor's Department (LCD).

The announcement is the latest in a long line of final chances, reinforcing the view that the Government's lack of desire to regulate the profession is matched only by the profession's inability to regulate itself.

In a letter to Law Society chief executive, Janet Paraskeva, David Lock MP, LCD parliamentary secretary, acknowledged the society's strong commitment to improving the system, which has seen the backlog of cases fall from 18,000 to 6,000 in the last 18 months.

However, Lock was "very disappointed" at the failure by the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors (OSS) to meet any of its other targets.

Last week's letter threatened the appointment of an independent Legal Services Complaints Commissioner if new targets were not met when the Legal Services Ombudsman's (LSO's) report is published in July.
"The quality of OSS' decision-making is not as good as we would have liked," said Simon Entwisle, service manager at the LSO office.

"The Government's view is to give them a chance to improve this." The tough new targets agreed between the LCD and the Law Society concentrate on case-
work quality and outline detailed timetables for the three categories of work: service and conduct complaints; remuneration certificate applications; and compensation fund claims.

"The jury is out on the profession's ability to handle its own complaints procedures," said Lock, who also criticised the high number of complaints against solicitors. "I want to see in-house complaints being handling by solicitors' firms, reducing the need for recourse to the OSS," he added.

"Client care is the key," Law Society president Michael Napier said. "We will continue to improve the turnaround of cases and the quality of casework," Paraskeva added.

First reported on www.legalweek.net (5 January).