The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) is launching a new online assessment tool to make life easier for consumers.

 The assessment tool provides a quick way for consumers to contact the Legal Ombudsman and discover whether their complaint can be handled immediately, or by another organisation or is too early to be dealt with. The assessment tool has been tested with consumers over the last month and since its introduction over 3,000 people have used it to assess their complaint. As a result almost 500 consumers realised that their complaint was outside of our jurisdiction and were signposted to the correct organisation, and a further 350 learnt that they had to wait to give their service provider the opportunity to respond to the complaint first. Five hundred went on to access the full complaint form.

The Customer Assessment Tool was developed in-house and is part of our ongoing programme of modernisation work to ensure we provide high levels of service to all our customers.

Wanda Goldwag, Chair of the OLC, said “Consumers today are often looking for quick responses to their questions. Our customer assessment tool is a great way for them to access our services and understand how and when we can help them.”

Notes to editors: 

1. The customer assessment tool can be found here. 

2. The Legal Ombudsman for England and Wales was set up by the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) under the Legal Services Act 2007. Independent and impartial, it investigates complaints and offers a free service to easily guide the public through the process of making complaints when they feel they have experienced poor service from regulated legal or claims management service providers. Its work goes above and beyond complaints by feeding back to service providers through courses, guidance documents, Periscope videos and conferences.

3. Before the Legal Ombudsman can accept complaints for investigation we have to ensure that complaints are within our jurisdiction. This means that a complaint must be about a regulated service provider and be brought to us within certain timescales. The consumer must also give their service provider the opportunity to respond to the complaint first.

4. Residential conveyancing, family law, personal injury, wills and probate and litigation continue to be our most complained about areas of law in the legal jurisdiction.