A judge talking with lawyers to make a decision in the court room. Photo: 123rf.com
The Law Society is investigating how it can handle complaints faster after a spike in the past year.
The society's annual report showed 1,366 complaints had been referred to its Standards Committee in the year to June - up 11 percent on the year before.
Most related to accusations of incompetence and negligence.
Law Society chief executive Katie Rusbatch told Midday Report the increase was partly due to more lawyers entering the profession, but people were also more aware of their rights.
"There's a number of factors at play here and it's difficulty to pinpoint anything exactly. Lawyers deal with contentious issues and sometimes, due to that, people can be unhappy with the outcomes," she said.
"There has been about a 10 percent increase in lawyers in the last five years. The trends we are seeing are also consistent with trends legal regulators are seeing overseas as well.
"We've also done more work as well, as a Law Society, in terms of making the complaints process more accessible. Sometimes when you do see increased trends in number of complaints this also means that people have more awareness of the complaints process."
There had been 566 complaints about negligence or incompetence, up from 511 on the year before.
That was a broad category, Rusbatch said.
"It can range really to what we would consider more minor matters - sometimes if there's concerns about delays, issues with communication that sort of thing.
"What we we have seen that is consistent is the number of complaints where we take no further action still sits at over 80 percent year-on-year."
The report said it took nine months to conclude complaints on average. The Law Society was working to improve that figure.
"We are doing a lot of work in this area in terms of regulatory reform," Rusbatch said.
"There was an independent review that we commissioned that came out in 2023. Legislative reform has been recommended in this area. It's not a current priority for the government. There are some changes tracking through parliament which will allow the Law Society to administratively triage complaints more easily.
"At the same time we're looking at our complaint system, particularly looking at our ability to resolve complaints up front and to support better early resolution."
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