Legal Ombudsman - Birmingham

No G. N. P.

Very disappointing experience. I was informed that the Legal Ombudsman cannot hold anyone accountable or conduct any form of investigation. In a case involving what I believe was illegal abandonment, they accepted the solicitor’s version of events without properly investigating or considering the evidence I presented. My key points highlighting misconduct were ignored, and every part of my complaint was rejected without a thorough review.

If you’re looking for accountability, I would not recommend using the Legal Ombudsman. It’s disheartening and alarming to realize that there seems to be no system in place to truly protect our legal rights. It leaves you feeling like you’re on your own.

Jason T.

The rules around engaging the Legal Ombusman are rediculous! I had to go through a 3 month complaints procedure with my Conveyancer before I could engage the legal ombudsman. Then 4 months after engaging the Legal Ombudsman they advise they can't do anything because the Conveyancer firm folded 2 months ago (2 months after I asked for Legal Ombudsman to intervene).

So, not only did the timescale for my claim take too long, eventual resulting in a lot of lost money.
But it also means the bad Conveyancer firm traded for longer than it should, no doubt putting many more customers in the same loss position I am left with.

This service needs speeding up to catch and stop bad law firms from costing innocent consumers excess money and stress! You could start be shortening the 3 month complaints process the Law Firms are currently allowed!!

Dominic I.

Utterly appalling. This service exists to protect lawyers and fob off consumers in order to avoid lawyers being taken to court. You can expect the so-called Investigator to make several sly attempts to derail your complaint in order to avoid dealing with it. Attempt to hold them to account and they'll rapidly adopt stonewalling tactics. It wouldn't surprise me if the investigators receive bribes on a regular basis that reward them for burying complaints.

Graeme D.

I absolutely confirm everything correct in previous poor reviews. If they don't have a set guideline for a specific problem they cannot think outside the box. Showed a major lack of respect by making glaring errors showing they don't fully read everything and or understand. Make assumptions and basically just guess at facts or important points. Won't change thier mind or consider other information and cannot appeal. So if you get someone who is clueless, the next person takes there information as correct. Very very poor. Out of all ombudsman the legal one is probably the worst by some way. Just makes you even more stressed and upset 😡

Rajesh K.

The Legal Ombudsman is supposed to offer a route for resolving complaints about legal services. Yet, crucial limitations make the service feel ineffective for many consumers.

The Legal Ombudsman will not investigate complaints where a solicitor has been negligent. So what exactly is the point of this service? So a lawyer can give bad advice, loose their clients money and still keep their legal fees?

The Legal Ombudsman also refuse to consider complaints if a law firm initiates court proceedings against their client. This creates a significant loophole: for example, if a client withholds legal fees due to bad legal advice and the law firm responds by filing a money claim, the Ombudsman will not take up the case, even if the court is willing to pause the proceedings pending the Legal Ombudsman’s decision.

In these situations, the only option left is to sue for negligence—an incredibly costly and risky step for most consumers.

Consumers are left without justice when lawyers provide poor advice.

Taking a solicitor to court is financially out of reach for many people. Even if you proceed, lawyers typically continue billing at £250 to £500 per hour throughout the process. Clients bear the financial and emotional burden, while lawyers keep profiting—often with no consequences for poor advice or service.

Where is the justice in that?

Compare this to the medical profession: if a doctor performs an unnecessary procedure, they can face disciplinary action, prosecution, and compensation claims for medical negligence. But if a solicitor advises a client to pursue or defend a claim that lacks merit, there are usually no consequences. The client is left to deal with the emotional and financial toll, including months of stress and hundreds of hours lost on paperwork. A system that only benefits the lawyers and they keep earning fees.

For a profession that prides itself on ethics and integrity, accountability can be alarmingly weak.

Despite rising solicitor fees, quality is not guaranteed. Senior partners charge premium rates but often delegate most of the work to newly qualified lawyers they are baby sitting. These junior lawyers are often overwhelmed, focused on billing targets, and may lack the experience needed to handle complex issues. They have a superficial understanding of case files.

When solicitors, lacks experience in a legal area, they simply refer the matter to "counsel" (barrister), all at the client's expense. If a solicitor charges £450 per hour, why should the client really be paying for what the solicitor doesn’t know

Legal directories like The Legal 500 offer no meaningful assurance of quality either.

To rebuild public trust, the Legal Ombudsman or the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) should publish complaint statistics for individual law firms and solicitors. Many clients are afraid to leave negative reviews online or are unsure whether they have grounds to complain.

The legal system often feels rigged. Lawyers play “paper tennis,” where each letter sent costs £450. Months can be wasted generating documents and correspondence that few people read, only for the case to settle before reaching court, as solicitors frequently advise clients to avoid trial.

As the saying goes: in legal disputes, the only true winners are the lawyers. It is designed for them to be rich at the expense of society.

The legal profession is worth £90bn. How much of their work is "real" value to the economy? It’s time to simplify legal processes so more people can resolve disputes without expensive legal representation. Justice should be accessible. The legal system should serve the public, not just the profession.

In 2023, the Legal Ombudsman received over 7,000 complaints—but only a small fraction resulted in substantial redress for clients.

Andy A.

They are biased, incompetent, and lack common sense in legal thinking. Despite reviewing all the documents I sent, I was disheartened by the lack of objectivity during the phone call. The employee displayed clear bias towards supporting the firm, even in the face of negligence and unprofessionalism evident in their actions and called it the firm wasting their time on me.
This misuse of taxpayer money is unacceptable. It is high time for this country to establish a government efficiency system to eliminate such institutions."

S C.

I have nothing but praise for the Legal Ombudsman service. I brought them an unusual wills & probate case which I and my family had already been battling for five years on our own before we finally contacted the LeO. It has taken just short of three years to investigate to completion, but that is perfectly ok, because in that time they were absolutely forensic in their investigation and got into every nook & cranny, literally no stone unturned.

The investigator who was initially assigned my case was a lovely lady, and she did the very best she could, with the knowledge she had. However, the case was so complex it needed an Ombudsman with an excellent working knowledge of the law to take it over, and oh boy, did he put in some man hours on it.

I can only imagine how much that level of work would have cost us had we been able to get a solicitor interested enough to take it on!

Our Ombudsman also got us the very best outcome possible, better than we ever dared to hope for.

Even better than that, the case has now gone to the SRA, which is why I can’t put any actual details about it, but I’m quite confident that proper justice will now soon be done and, hopefully, other families will be spared the trauma of what we have suffered.

If I have a little bit of advice for anyone who is having problems with a legal service provider, it’s to keep a diary/dossier. Keep it up to date & concise. Try to keep emotions out of it and just stick to the facts (yes, that is very difficult, but it can be done!). Collect and incorporate into it any & every piece of evidence you can. Get signed & dated receipts for everything you give them. Don’t throw anything away. If you have a meeting with them, get a notepad and take notes throughout the meeting. Keep all emails they send to you and keep emails from yourself to them. It might even be worth printing off phone records for proof of phone conversations etc. Whatever constitutes evidence is worth keeping hold of in my personal experience.

Also, don’t forget that if you disagree with the investigators’ initial findings, don’t be frightened to say so, don’t just accept something that you know isn’t quite right. Ask for it to go to the Ombudsman for review with your reasons for why you disagree.

I am quite certain that without the help of the Ombudsman service, the behaviour of the firm I reported might never have been exposed, and they would be free to do it again. So, in conclusion, I believe this service is absolutely vital.

I will never be able to thank them enough for everything they have done for us. 😊

Riegmar ?. V.

Why is there not an option to rate with 0 stars? As given this entity even 1 star is far too gracious. I recently sought out help/ support from the Legal Ombudsman as I’ve been going through a case for the past 5 years with Right Legal Group - what an absolute scam of solicitors.

After waiting so long to for an email just saying that they will get back to me, I had to wait even longer just to get a response. The response that I received was in no helpful as they did not in any way hold the solicitors accountable for their actions which was outlined in my complaint - and there were many. I could already tell that they did not carefully go through my complain as in their summary they named my family member that died as the brother of my mother which was not even the case. All this wasted time in hopes that I would be supported and the solicitors would be held accountable, in the end, no help was given.

So, now I’m back to square one, struggle with a case that’s been ongoing for years with thousands of dollars owed with no support whatsoever. What a rigged system, as the Legal Ombudsman also relies on firms financially.

It’s sad to say, but I recommend not even wasting your time here. Such shameful service all around.