Complaints Handling for Scottish Law Firms
Complaints handling in Scotland works differently from the system in England and Wales, and the difference matters more than most firms treat it as. Where firms regulated by the SRA answer to the Legal Ombudsman, Scottish practice units answer to the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, and the internal duty that sits behind that gateway is Rule B5 of the Law Society of Scotland Practice Rules.
Rule B5 is short, specific, and easy to comply with on paper. It is also easy to let slide once the designated person moves on, the central record falls behind, or the written procedure stops reflecting how complaints are actually dealt with. With the complaints system in Scotland now being reshaped by the Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Act 2025, this is a good moment for firms to look again at how the rule is being met in practice.
What Rule B5 Actually Requires
Rule B5 obliges every practice unit to designate one of its managers as its Client Relations Manager, the person responsible for dealing with complaints made to the firm. The designation is not optional, and it is time-bound. A new firm must designate within 28 days of commencing practice, and the same 28-day clock restarts every time the role falls vacant. For a sole practitioner, the rule treats the practitioner as automatically designated.
Beyond the appointment itself, the rule carries a set of obligations that are easy to underestimate:
- A central record of every written complaint. The firm must maintain a central record capturing, as a minimum, nine specified data fields for each complaint: the file reference, the date the complaint was made, a description of its substance, the category of personnel it was directed at, the type of business involved, the action taken, the date it was closed, whether it was resolved, and the learning outcomes.
- Production on request. That record must be delivered to the Society within 21 days of a request, and the Society can ask no more than once a year.
- A written complaints procedure. The procedure the firm follows must be set out in writing and supplied to any client, former client, or other person who asks for it, within 28 days.
- Signposting to the SLCC. Where a complaint comes from someone who is not the firm’s client, the firm must notify that person in writing of their right to complain to the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, including current contact details.
- Notifying the Society. The name and contact details of the Client Relations Manager must be notified to the Council, and any change notified within 28 days.
The obligation also survives the firm. Under Rule B5, where a practice unit is dissolved or ceases business, the Client Relations Manager remains responsible for complaints made in the two years following, and for any made before, until those complaints are concluded. A firm winding down does not switch the duty off.
The Two-Tier System Behind the Rule
Rule B5 does not exist in isolation. It is the firm-level foundation of a wider Scottish complaints structure that catches out practitioners who assume it works like the English one.
The Scottish Legal Complaints Commission is the single gateway for all complaints about legal services in Scotland. It triages what comes in and separates the two categories that matter. Service complaints, about the standard of the work or the way the client was treated, are investigated by the SLCC itself. Conduct complaints, about the behaviour and professional standards of the solicitor, are referred to the Law Society of Scotland. The distinction is not always obvious at intake, and a single grievance can contain both.
What this means for the firm is that the quality of first-tier handling under Rule B5 has consequences well beyond the firm’s own walls. A complaint resolved properly and early, with a clear written response and a documented outcome, often never reaches the SLCC at all. A complaint handled defensively, or lost because no one was clearly responsible for it, is far more likely to escalate into the formal system, with the cost, time, and scrutiny that brings.
Change Is Coming Through the 2025 Act
The reason to revisit Rule B5 now, rather than at some undefined point in the future, is that the framework around it is moving.
The Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Act 2025 received Royal Assent in June 2025, and its provisions are being commenced in stages through 2026. The first commencement regulations took effect on 5 March 2026, with further provisions, including an expanded role for the SLCC’s Consumer Panel, following from 1 July 2026.
For complaints handling specifically, the direction is clear. The Act is designed to make the Scottish complaints system more flexible, proportionate and risk-based, addressing long-standing criticism that the current statutory process is slow and rigid. The Law Society is gaining the ability to initiate complaints without first routing them through the SLCC, and to raise a complaint against a firm as a whole rather than only against named individuals. The SLCC is gaining the power to set mandatory minimum standards for how complaints are investigated and determined.
That last point deserves attention. Minimum standards for complaint handling, set centrally and applied across the profession, change the character of Rule B5 compliance. A firm that treats its complaints procedure as a document to be dusted off when someone asks for it will find the gap between paper and practice harder to defend as those standards take shape.
This mirrors what we have seen in England and Wales, where regulators have moved decisively towards scrutinising first-tier handling. The Legal Ombudsman’s reforms to tackle record complaint demand, which we covered in Legal Ombudsman Sets Out Significant Reforms to Tackle Record Complaint Demand, and the SRA’s parallel focus, covered in The SRA Confirms New Complaints Handling Focus, both point the same way. The Scottish framework is distinct, but the underlying expectation across both jurisdictions is the same: complaints should be resolved earlier, handled consistently, and evidenced when required.
Why Firms Are Choosing to Outsource Complaints Handling
The Client Relations Manager role is usually held by a partner or senior manager, and that is precisely where the difficulty lies. The person carrying the duty is frequently the busiest person in the firm, often supervising the very work a complaint relates to, and rarely has the distance to handle a grievance about their own team objectively.
That creates three recurring problems. The record slips, because maintaining nine data fields for every complaint is an administrative task that loses out to fee-earning. Consistency suffers, because how a complaint is handled depends on who happens to pick it up. And objectivity is compromised, because it is genuinely hard to investigate a complaint about a colleague, or about work you supervised, with the detachment the situation calls for.
Outsourcing the complaints function addresses all three. An independent, external team brings the distance the role needs, applies the same process to every complaint regardless of who it concerns, and keeps the central record in the form the Society expects to see. It also takes the emotional weight of a difficult conversation off the people least able to have it dispassionately, which tends to produce better outcomes for the client as well as the firm.
There is a defensive benefit too. When complaints are managed independently and documented properly throughout, the firm can demonstrate to the SLCC or the Society that its handling was thorough, consistent and fair. That evidence changes the tone of any oversight conversation before it begins.
How RACO Handles Complaints for Scottish Firms
RACO provides an outsourced complaint management service built around the requirements Scottish firms actually face, including Rule B5 and the SLCC gateway. The service covers the full lifecycle of a complaint, from first notification through investigation to final response, and, where a matter proceeds to the SLCC, managing that process on the firm’s behalf.
In practice, that means we maintain the central record to the standard the rule requires, ensure the written procedure is in place and issued on request, handle the signposting obligations, and bring an independent, consistent approach to every complaint the firm receives. Your Client Relations Manager retains the designation and oversight the rule requires, while the day-to-day burden and the difficult judgement calls sit with a specialist team.
For Scottish firms, this is one of the most direct ways to close the gap between having a complaints procedure and running one that would stand up to scrutiny, particularly as the 2025 Act reshapes what that scrutiny looks like.
For more information about The Regulation & Compliance Office, you can call us on 0203 985 8550 or email us at: info@regulationandcomplianceoffice.co.uk
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