BARRISTERS and solicitors may soon cease to belong to self-regulating professions and are facing a shake-up of the ownership of legal practices.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton, QC, the Lord Chancellor, will today commit the Government to a White Paper that will strip the legal profession of control of its own complaints-handling.

He is also expected to announce plans to allow lawyers to go into business with non-legal professionals, such as accountants.

The move threatens to divide the legal profession and will be resented by the Bar, whose system for handling complaints against barristers is regarded as working well — in contrast to the Law Society’s trouble-hit service for grievances against solicitors.

Lord Falconer wants to press ahead with proposals put forward last December by Sir David Clementi, the chairman of the Prudential, to sweep away restrictive practices and make the legal profession more “consumer-focused”.

The Clementi report proposed that a single Office for Legal Complaints should handle all complaints against lawyers and that a “legal services board” with a lay majority, chaired by a non- laywer and accountable to Parliament, should oversee all lawyers.

Sir David, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, also recommended that barristers and solicitors should be free to go into business with each other, outside companies or individuals in order to own or manage law firms — an idea that has been dubbed the “Tesco Law”.

Michael Scott, the Bar’s independent complaints commissioner, will say today that the move would plunge complaints-handling against barristers into a turmoil.

The Bar’s complaints system was set up eight years ago and has a consumer sastisfaction rate of 87 per cent. Where complainants go to the final arbiter — the Legal Services Ombudsman — there is a 95 per cent satisfaction rate.

The number of complaints against barristers dropped from 685 in 2003 to 667 last year, with complaints from the public remaining stable at 457.

Yet the handling of complaints by the Law Society of England and Wales, which represents nearly 100,000 solicitors, has been criticised repeatedly by ministers and watchdogs.

Mr Scott said: “I have serious misgivings. I cannot help feeling that had it not been for the Law Society’s difficulty in handling complaints against solicitors we would not be in this position.

“The effect appears to be to put the Bar back to where it was eight years ago.”

He accepted the need for greater transparency in complaints-handling and that different complaints systems could be confusing for the public.

However, he said that the Bar’s system received up to £2 million a year in free advice from top barristers.

Meanwhile Zahida Manzoor, the Legal Services Ombudsman, the present watchdog on legal complaints, faces the possibility of legal action by the Law Society over targets that she has set for the processing of complaints.

The society and Ms Manzoor are locked in a dispute over the targets, which — if they are not met — could see the Law Society facing a fine of up to £1 million.

LAW ON ORDER

• Tesco Law has become the shorthand label for the Clementi proposals for the reform of how people “buy” legal services

• One of the key proposals is to allow companies to invest in or buy a share in a law firm, or even own a law firm themselves

• High Street retailers, such as supermarkets or chains such as Marks & Spencer, could set up their own law firm and offer legal services to the public — a practice currently prohibited

• Customers could then shop for food or clothes alongside buying a will or obtaining advice on a house purchase

• In practice, the big retailers have shown only lukewarm interest, with the RAC the only big company to have come out strongly in favour. It wants to be able to offer a range of legal “car-related” services

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