Annual Report 2008-09 - Legal Services Commissioner

Chapter TWO
Handling complaints
Investigations
The role of the Legal Services Commissioner in handling a disciplinary complaint is to investigate the conduct of the legal
practitioner. The Legal Services Commissioner may undertake the investigation or refer it to a PIB to do so.
During 2008-09, the Legal Services Commissioner commenced 528 investigations, and referred 124 investigations to the
PIBs. See Graphs 2.4 and 2.5 of the Appendices for further details about investigations.
The Legal Services Commissioner referred fewer investigations to the PIBs in 2008-09 than in 2007-08.
The Legal Services Commissioner also commenced 14 own motion investigations during the year, as well as six preliminary
investigations.
BASIS FOR OWN MOTION INVESTIGATION
PRELIMINARY
INVESTIGATION
Own Motion
Investigation
Total
Files
Trust account report 1 6 7
Referral from other agency (including a court) 2 3 5
LSC complaint file 3 3 6
Media 0 2 2
Other 0 0 0
Total 6 14 20
As at 30 June 2009 there were 38 open own motion investigation files, which includes the files opened during 2008-
09 as well as the files opened in previous years.
Outcomes of complaints
The Legal Services Commissioner closed 1893 files during
2008-09, which included files opened in previous years and
closed during the year. Coincidentally, exactly the same
number of files were closed in 2007-08.
This is a significant achievement as the Court of Appeal’s
decision in Byrne v Marles [2008] VSCA 98 added an extra
step to the complaint handling process and therefore
elongated the time taken to handle complaints.
See Table 2.10 in the Appendices for details about the time
taken to close files.
Civil complaints
Graph :
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
Civil outcomes where the LSC had the
jurisdiction to handle the disputes
2007-08
2008-09
The Legal Services Commissioner closed 534 civil complaint
files during 2008-09. In 73% of cases where the Legal
Services Commissioner had power to handle the dispute,
the Commissioner was able to assist the parties resolve
the dispute.
0
1 2
Total
1 LSC settled the civil dispute between practitioner & client
(includes where client satisfied with practitioner’s response and
withdrew complaint)
2 LSC was unable to settle the civil dispute & parties were advised of their
right to apply to VCAT
See Table 2.11 in the Appendices for further details about the
outcome of civil disputes
16 Legal Services COMMISSIONER 2009 Annual Report