People may not love lawyers — but mostly they are happy with the services they provide. Yet a significant one in five are dissatisfied and feel let down, according to a survey this week.

The main problems are the length of time taken to deal with a case, lack of communication and, inevitably, cost. People are worried about what the likely fees will be and feel that cases may be delayed to ratchet up costs. They also feel alienated by legal jargon and frustrated at their lack of control, arising from not being kept informed on the progress of their case.

The survey, the latest to gauge consumer views of solicitors, has been undertaken by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA), the body now in charge of the standards and discipline of 100,000 solicitors in England and Wales. Peter Williamson, its chairman, said that consumers did not seem to appreciate that they should be receiving a certain level of client care and that was of concern. “While the majority of those surveyed were satisfied, all clients should be given cost and service level information when they use a solicitor. Clients should also know how their case is going to be handled, including an explanation of what uncertainties there may be.”

The three bugbears are lack of communication, cost and delay — the same complaints that have been levelled against solicitors consistently over at least the past two decades. While most solicitors may now have got the message, the numbers that still fail to realise that clients must be kept informed and dealt with expeditiously remains much too high.

The survey found that people felt a “strong sense of dissatisfaction” about levels of fees charged — a view that might be lessened if they were kept in the picture as to exactly what was being done, and told in advance and regularly what the charges would be. Typically, in such cases, people hear nothing for weeks or months and then after a couple of letters receive a hefty bill.

The SRA report says: “There was concern that there was very little transparency about the length of time that a case was likely to take and a general sense that simple tasks took too long to perform.”

If people complained, then the top reason was the overall time taken, followed by lack of communication, charges not being explained and then poor advice.

The survey of 1,000 clients threw up other findings. Consumers felt strongly that where solicitors pay fees to people who introduce work to them, those fees (so-called referral fees) should be declared. Previous research has shown that most people are not aware of such arrangements and do not understand them.

The SRA has a new chance to try to reduce sloppy service to a minimum — perhaps through tougher enforcement of its rules on what solicitors are meant to do for clients. People coming to solicitors are doing so at a time in their lives when frequently they are vulnerable or facing stress — and therefore it is all the more important that they should not then face the added stress of poor service from their lawyers.

Meanwhile, there is a message, too, for the regulators. Most people surveyed felt — in contrast to the reality — that the legal profession is under-regulated and that regulators would be on the side of solicitors. To turn that perception around, the SRA is going to have to prove that it means business for the consumer — and that it will crack the whip loudly in the interests of the public.

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