Oversight & Research

As well as our work on complaints about lawyers, we oversee how the professional bodies deal with conduct complaints. This includes investigating complaints about how these bodies have handled individual complaints and auditing the complaint records.

We also monitor trends in complaints and use that data to issue guidance and best practice notes to the profession on how to deal with complaints and how to prevent common issues from arising in the first place.

We actively take that guidance out to the profession through an annual cycle of outreach work which includes presentations, workshops and one to one discussions with firms and groups of practitioners and those entering the legal profession. 

We publish headline data from our trends analysis and share detailed data with the professional bodies to inform their regulatory work. 

We also use our statutory powers to monitor the arrangements that are in place relating to the Scottish Solicitors Client Protection Fund and the indemnity insurance arrangements for solicitors.

In July 2021 we published 'Our Approach to Oversight' - a statement of how we will use our oversight powers to ensure public confidence in the complaints and redress system. This statement was updated in September 2022 to take into account learning from the first year of operation, and to include the SLCC’s new oversight powers in relation to the Alternative Business Structures regulatory regime.