The majority of the disciplinary committee dealing with complaints against solicitors should be non-lawyers, according to the Law Society.
The solicitors' body has also recommended that a client who has made a justifiable complaint should be eligible for compensation, up to a maximum of €3,000.
The recommendations are among 56 in a report by a Regulatory Review Task Force, set up by the Law Society and chaired by Mr Joe Brosnan, former secretary general of the Department of Justice.
The report is published weeks before the long-awaited report of the Competition Authority on the legal professions, which is expected to recommend wide-ranging changes in how they are organised and regulated.
The task force recommendations have been accepted by the Council of the Law Society and it is implementing most of them, while calling for legislation on those proposals requiring changes in the law.
The task force was set up over a year ago to examine the procedures and systems whereby the Law Society regulates its members and deals with complaints against solicitors.
At the moment clients who are dissatisfied with their solicitor can complain either to the society itself or to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, under the aegis of the High Court.
A sub-committee of the Council of the Law Society, the Registrar's Committee, hears complaints against solicitors from clients. Two-third of its members are members of the council, and a third are lay, nominated by the social partners and the Consumers Association of Ireland. Under the task force's recommendations, this will change, so that a majority of its members will be lay.
Serious complaints are heard by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, which is under the jurisdiction of the president of the High Court. It has 10 members who are practising solicitors and 10 lay members and can recommend sanctions up to and including being struck off the Roll of Solicitors.
Complaints can be made either by the Law Society or by a member of the public. They are first screened by a sub-committee which establishes if there is a prima facie case to answer.
The Law Society's own Registrar's Committee (another recommendation is to change its name to Complaints and Client Relations Committee) can impose conditions on a solicitor continuing to practice.
Where a question of financial irregularity is involved, it can refer the matter to the Compensation Fund Committee, which investigates the financial affairs of the practice.
Where the client is dissatisfied, he or she can appeal to the Independent Adjudicator.
The report expresses concern that 10 years after the 1994 Solicitors Act required that charges be clearly set out to clients in advance, some solicitors "seem not to be fully cognisant with the requirements of this section".
This includes a prohibition on percentage charging and deducting solicitor and client costs from damages without prior written agreement.