It seems that the subject of client care and the related role of the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors (OSS) never ceases to excite controversy.But there has been no contribution to the debate made by someone at the sharp end of complaints handling.

My intention is to remedy that defect.

In doing so, I give my views as someone with five years experience of dealing with complaints about solicitors' service, tempered by 28 years experience in private practice and more than eight years as the honorary secretary of my local law society.A frequent criticism is that the OSS has not changed and still consists of the same people who constituted the Solicitors Complaints Bureau (SCB).

Such comments are ill-informed.

In fact, of the 19 people who dealt with service complaints in August 1996, only five remain.

Since then, both the structure and the complaints handling philosophy of the OSS have been fundamentally revised with the purpose of stemming the flow of complaints and dealing more efficiently and promptly with those received.Despite this, the flow still increases.

The reasons why are probably many, but the cause remains consistent and lies squarely with the profession, which, on the whole, has shown a marked reluctance to embrace practice rule 15, apparently viewing it as an imposition rather than as a useful management tool.Delay is the other frequent complaint.

There certainly have been delays and some still exist, but these are not because of any lack of effort, but are caused by the lack of personnel available to deal with the number of complaints received.

The OSS cannot turn complaints away.

The profession is reluctant to pay more to fund the OSS.

The result is that the OSS receives more complaints than it is possible to handle with the available resources.The only solution, under those circumstances, is to force the profession to recognise its responsibilities under rule 15.

Completely unmeritorious complaints are made, just as complaints are made by those who merely seek to avoid payment of fees or by those whose view of reality is more than distorted, but these are proportionally few in number.The plain fact is that the great majority of complaints could have been remedied at the outset had they been dealt with in a proper and sympathetic way.

That is by recognising that the client is unhappy and, without being confrontational, trying to discover why and then addressing the problem.Far too many solicitors have no concept of 'service'.

Many respond to the OSS that a client has no cause for complaint because the work was done properly and the client has not lost anything financially, ignoring the fact that it took two years to achieve what should have been done in six months.This is why the OSS has, during the past 18 months, made strenuous efforts -- by publishing guides, key cards and articles and holding workshops and surgeries -- to persuade the profession of the standards of service expected of it by the public, and that technical competence alone is no longer acceptable.All such initiatives will be lost if self-regulation is lost.

A government-regulated institution would not be interested in trying to help the profession.

In addition, it would have no compunction about increasing the financial demands made on the profession to remedy any lack of resources.Those working at the sharp end recognise they are doing so to a desperately short time scale in terms of retaining self-regulation.It is high time the profession recognised that attitudes to clients need to undergo a radical culture change.

Some, but sadly all too few, firms have made enormous progress in this respect.

Unfortunately a majority of firms appears not even to have started to appreciate the realities of business life.