A third of solicitors who were requested to attend internal complaints hearings last year failed to turn up, according to the first report of the Independent Adjudicator of the Law Society.
The report, published yesterday, found that of 158 solicitors requested to attend the society's registrars' committee meetings, at which complaints from clients are heard, only 79 showed up.
A total of 26 solicitors were excused in advance and when these are excluded from the calculations, the proportion of solicitors who failed to attend rises to more than 40 per cent.
Mr Eamon Condon, the first holder of the independent office, said the finding reflected a "scant regard for the authority of the society and the rights of the clients".
He said the majority of solicitors who attended the hearings paid due regard to its authority. "Others, however, left me with the impression that their involvement was part of `going through the motions' and in several cases offered hardly credible excuses for particular actions or, in the majority of cases, inactions."
His report showed the Law Society received 1,180 complaints in the year October 1997 to September 1998. Of the 158 solicitors referred to the registrars' committee, only 17 were subsequently referred to the disciplinary tribunal of the High Court. which can recommend fines or suspension from the profession.
The President of the High Court is the only person who can impose these penalties and on average strikes two to three solicitors off the rolls a year.
Mr Condon's office was established in late 1997 to provide an independent avenue of complaint for solicitors' clients.
Of the 59 cases reviewed by him last year, 25 related to inadequate professional service, 19 related to alleged misconduct and 15 related to excessive fees.
Civil litigation was the most common type of case, accounting for 22 of the 59 cases. This was followed by conveyancing (16 cases), probate (11) and matrimonial (7).
Mr Condon, a former banker, said communication problems lay at the root of many of the complaints.
Of 120 cases surveyed at random, he found that almost 30 per cent were complaints made by solicitors against other solicitors. The main reason for the complaints were difficulties in getting a response to correspondence or delays in handing over files.
Mr Condon said he was struck by the fact that not one of the 120 solicitors surveyed sent a letter of apology to a client.
Among his recommendations to the Law Society were that it develop a practice management course for its members, frame a code of conduct on client care and publicise the complaints procedure.
He noted that it was extremely difficult for complainants to gather evidence of professional misconduct to the requisite standard of proof required for referral to the High Court's disciplinary tribunal. To counteract this, he said the society might "apply a lesser standard of proof based on the balance of probabilities".
The director general of the Law Society, Mr Ken Murphy, said it welcomed the report. "It bears out our belief that the Law Society does a good job in dealing with complaints. We don't believe the system is perfect but most of the recommendations in the report have been implemented already and we will be implementing the rest in full."
At 1,180, the number of complaints last year was up on 199697, when there were 1,026 complaints, but down on 1995-96, when there were 1,249 complaints.
