As well as handling complaints about lawyers and legal services, the SLCC also has oversight of the complaint handling and redress arrangements delivered by the ‘Relevant Professional Organisations’ – currently, the Law Society of Scotland, the Faculty of Advocates and the Association of Construction Attorneys.

This includes investigating complaints about how those bodies deal with conduct and regulatory complaints, auditing complaint records, and monitoring arrangements relating to indemnity insurance and client protection funds. 

The SLCC also monitors trends in complaints and uses that data to issue guidance to the profession on how to deal with complaints and how to prevent common causes of complaints arising in the first place.

Commenting on the publication, Vicky Crichton, director of public policy said: “The SLCC was given statutory powers of oversight of complaints and redress in order to bring an independent view to the entire complaints process.

“In 2021 we consulted on and published a statement on how we would use those powers to best effect to add value and contribute to well-functioning complaint handling and redress systems and processes across the legal services sector.

“The approach guides our oversight work and helps us to achieve our aim to promote public confidence in the regulation of legal services and to drive improvement.

“With an expansion of our powers on the horizon from the Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Act 2025, we felt the time was right to revisit that statement.

“We’d welcome views from anyone who uses, or is involved with legal services, as well as the regulators we oversee and other stakeholders.”

The SLCC’s consultation can be viewed here and is open until 5pm on 18 November.