Resolution Code of Practice

This post ties in with a post on my own personal blog named Gotcha……. dysfunctional complaints procedures.

Before I get to the "meat in the sandwich" I will deal with the siren voices from the self appointed elites in the wikivorce community that perpetually claim that my threads and comments are not why people come to wikivorce and how I endanger the community.

In my world hits means interest and that is true of anybody who is seriously developing a presence on the internet.  In my world professional standards mean somthing, in my world professionals are required to exhibit a level of self-denial in order to be considered professional and thereby be devoted to the collective goals of an industry or organization. In my world Wiki means somthing slightly different.

I purchased the domain where my blog currently resides in March of 2007 with the intention of providing a narrative in an easy to follow fashion so as I could present the evidence I have about what I believe to be a corrupt solicitor and dishonest legal firm.
The intended audience for that narrative were the regulatory authorities and the courts. In August of 2007 I presented the evidence to the LCS, Resolution and to the legal firm in question. I set up some serious domain tracking and from this tracking I can tell you that the LCS never bothered to read the majority of the evidence and in MARCH of 2008 they declared that they would not be following up my complaint.
If you take the time to read my personal blog, you will hear that Resolution say they didnt bother to view the evidence either, which I already knew from the web stats. The legal firm in question however seem to spend age’s googling and visiting the site.
On the 11th June this year I decided to use the protections that journalists enjoy and bring this matter to the publics’ attention in the form of a blog. The matter in question is the honesty and integrity of solicitors in divorce and what I consider to be dysfunctional complaints procedures and bogus quality standards.
So the blog started 11th June and I made my first post in wikivorce on 25th June. My webstats took off at that point and I have now had a total of 959 unique views in that period, of which I guess about 80% are from the wikivorce community.
The siren voices just don’t get it, the internet is about content and users seek out content, and poor content suppliers disappear fairly rapidly. That applies as much in the Wikivorce community as it does in the wider internet. The integrity of wikivorce is obviously central, however the majority of solicitors giving advice upon this site are members of Resolution, so this topic is central in divorce. I am not a complete idiot and the last thing that I would wish to do is cause any harm to Wikivorce, So Siren Voices please be quite and credit me with a bit of intelligence, and understand that my objective is honesty and integrity from professionals.

The Meat in the sandwich:
Resolution has 5000 members and those members all pay an annual subscription of £150 per year, which equates to a turnover of £750,000 pa. They also have affiliate members of an unspecified number contributing slightly less. They also provide additional support and training at a PRICE.
I took the time to look up their trading position on Companies House website , and their financial position as you would expect is very healthy indeed, especially when you consider that the “mubo jumbo” accountants present to companies house is usually as depressed as possible for tax reasons. Suffice to say Resolution is doing very nicely based upon their abbreviated balance sheet for 2007.
It is not appropriate for me to divulge that information in this post, however ANYBODY can purchase it at Companies House Website for £1.

This page here is the flipside to the Resolution code of practice. It would have been nice to see amongst the benefits some reference to improving the situation in the family courts, however it focuses upon paid for training and the commercial benefits of being a member.
The oath of allegiance to the Code of Practice that solicitors have to sign can be found here . This is essentially a disclaimer/due diligence by Resolution, to protect the organization if their code of practice is violated by a member and thus protect Resolution from any liability 

This is taken from the first complaints form that I was sent 06 June 2004 and it states:
“I understand that the powers of SFLA are limited to reprimanding the member, requiring the member to make a written apology, requiring the member to attend the new members course, suspending the member from membership for a specified period or until the new members course has been attended or expulsion from membership.”

In the same e mail in answer to my question about the effectiveness of the complaints procedure I got the following response:

“In answer to your query, of 7 complaints received in 2003 which went to the Complaints Committee two were upheld and of 10 received in 2002 and dealt with in 2003 three were upheld.”

These are not credible figures AT ALL, they don’t clarify what form of reprimand was actually decided upon, how many were rejected and never made it to the committee stage. An important part of a complaints procedure is a DETAILED history of complaints and remedial action.

What these two exerts show you is the complaints procedure is essentially setup to protect members and satisfy due diligence rather than ensuring standards and continuous improvement.

The purpose of this post is to warn people not to expect any part of the code of practice to be adhered too. That is not saying that there are not some honorable members who do take it seriously, because there are, but as in all professions there is always the corrupt element.

Until the focus of Resolution is one of continuous improvement with an emphasis on professional standards with proper internal and external auditing of members, the lowest common denominator will always determine the standard.

From my twenty years of experience of quality standards in the food industry, I can tell you that this particular standard would NOT be acceptable to any of the major high street food retailers, yet it is a quality standard that is directly affecting the families and children of the nation. What I find particular concerning is that nobody from the profession seems to care or have the courage to break ranks and declare this as unacceptable.

Arnie.