SRA transparency rules and your website requirements
The SRA Transparency Rules have been in force since 6 December 2018 and require price and service information to be published for specified work types. Published means reachable by a member of the public without a login, a form or a phone call. Which of a firm's services are in scope is the firm's own judgement.
Last updated: 5 August 2026
What does published actually mean when the page is a website?
That a member of the public can read the information without asking anybody for it.
This is the part that gets lost. The rules are a publication requirement, not a design specification. They do not name a template, a URL, a heading structure or a word count, and no supplier can hand a firm a layout and call it the rule. What they do create is a test with a plain answer: can somebody who has never contacted the firm find and read this.
Four things break that test on real firm websites, and all four are ordinary build decisions rather than legal ones.
- Information behind a form. A page that asks for an email address before it shows a fee has not published the fee.
- A download instead of a page. A document a reader has to open in another application is harder to reach on a phone and invisible to anything that reads the page as text.
- An orphan. A page with no link pointing at it exists at a URL and nowhere else. If the only route to it is a search on the firm's own site, most readers will not arrive.
- A page a crawler cannot retrieve. Blocked or unrendered content is not readable by the systems that increasingly stand between a reader and the site. The mechanics of that sit on the technical layer under a firm's website.
None of those four is a judgement about adequacy. They are observations about whether a document is in front of the public, which is a different and much smaller question.
Which information do the rules ask a firm to publish?
Price and service information for the work types the rules specify, checked 3 August 2026.
Described in general terms rather than quoted, the items a firm is expected to make available cover the basis on which it charges, the disbursements a client should expect, indicative timescales, the qualifications and experience of the people doing the work, and information about complaints. The middle column below is the part a supplier is actually paid for; the right-hand column is the part a supplier must not pretend to.
| What the rules ask to be published | What that is as web content | What a supplier can and cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| The basis on which the firm charges | A stated basis per service: a fixed fee, a fixed fee per stage, or an hourly rate with an estimate | Build the page around the figures the firm supplies. Never choose the basis |
| Likely disbursements | A named list with amounts, laid out separately from the fee | Lay it out so the two are not read as one number. Never estimate an amount |
| Indicative timescales | Stages with ranges rather than a single total | Structure it. The ranges belong to the fee earner |
| Who does the work, and their qualifications and experience | A profile per fee earner, linked from the service page | Build and link the profiles. The wording is approved inside the firm |
| Information about complaints | A page reachable in one click from anywhere on the site | Build it and link it. Never draft the route from memory |
That table is a description of the items in practice. It is not a quotation of a provision, it is not a checklist a firm can rely on, and it does not tell any particular firm which of its services the price requirement reaches.
Who decides whether the rules apply to a particular service?
The firm, with its own advisers. Not a marketing supplier, and not this page.
The rules apply to specified work types rather than to everything a firm does. Working out which of a firm's own service lines fall inside that set is an application of the rule to the facts of one practice, and it is exactly the kind of question a firm employs a COLP to own. A supplier who arrives with a list and says "these are yours" has told the firm what it read somewhere, not what applies to the firm.
We hold that line for a commercial reason as well as a professional one. Of the 40 legal-marketing suppliers we read in full on 3 August 2026, 8 claimed a guarantee of some kind. A guarantee about a regulatory position is the least defensible of them, because the person giving it is not the person who answers for it.
The method a firm can use to make that decision, and to write it down, is on which of your services the price publication rules cover.
What can a supplier observe, and what can only the firm judge?
A supplier can observe absence. Only the firm can judge sufficiency.
A damaging admission, early: we cannot tell a firm whether what it publishes is enough. That is not modesty. It is the actual limit of the position — we do not see the matters, the retainers or the fee structures behind the page, and the judgement about whether the firm meets its obligations belongs to the firm and its COLP.
What we can state factually is narrower and still useful:
- Whether a page exists at all for a given service.
- Whether a reader can reach it without a login, a form or a download.
- Whether a machine can read it, which now decides whether it is quoted back to a searcher.
- Whether the figures on it are the firm's own, approved by somebody in the firm before publication.
Those are observations. The judgement they feed into is not ours, and any supplier claiming otherwise is selling something it is not in a position to give.
What does the work cost, and what will it not do?
Published, fixed, and quoted before anybody speaks to you.
| Product | Price |
|---|---|
| Price Transparency Pack | £890, ten working days |
| Firm Site | £2,400 |
| Firm Site+ | £4,200 |
| Authority Build | £6,900 |
| Retainer, monthly | £600 · £1,200 · £2,400, no minimum term |
Take £700 off a build taken with six months of retainer. Nothing here is priced per enquiry, per matter or per client: LASPO 2012 section 56 prohibits referral fees in prescribed legal business and binds the paying firm as well as the party paid.
For scale, £890 is roughly 51 Nottingham family-solicitor clicks at Google's own price of £17.18, measured 3 August 2026. 51 × £17.18 = £876.18. That is arithmetic on a click price, not a forecast of anything.
What it will not do: it will not resolve a scope question, it will not put a firm in a position to say it complies, and it will not fill a diary that is already full. A firm unsure of its position should take advice on the rule before it commissions pages about it, and we will say so rather than take the instruction.
Whether your own site meets this
The check takes about two minutes and lists which of the items above are absent from your site, from your own answers. It is not a compliance assessment — that judgement belongs to the firm and its COLP — and it is free either way.
If you want the pages built rather than listed, the Price Transparency Pack is £890 and takes ten working days.
Where should I read next?
On scope, and how a firm decides which of its own services are reached: which of your services the price publication rules cover.
On the two items readers look for last and firms build worst: complaints information, the Legal Ombudsman and the SRA digital badge.
On the inside of a fee page, once the scope question is settled: price transparency pages, what good looks like.
Further out: law firm branding agency covers identity, and marketing strategy for law firm covers where any of this sits in a plan.
Frequently asked questions
When did the SRA Transparency Rules come into force?
6 December 2018. We last checked their status on 3 August 2026, and a page carrying a figure about a rule should say when it was checked rather than imply it is permanently current.
Do the rules say how a website must be designed?
No. They are a publication requirement, not a design specification, and they name no template, URL, heading structure or word count. Any supplier presenting a layout as the rule is presenting its own opinion in the rule's clothing.
What counts as published?
Information a member of the public can read without a login, a form or a phone call, on a page that something links to. Content behind a form, content available only as a download, and orphan pages all fail that plain test.
Which of my firm's services do the rules cover?
That is a judgement for the firm and its own advisers, usually owned by the COLP. The rules apply to specified work types, and applying them to one practice's service lines is an application of the rule to facts we do not hold.
Can a supplier make my firm compliant?
No. A supplier can build the pages the rules ask for and state factually which items are absent from a site. Whether the firm meets its obligations is a judgement for the firm and its COLP, and 8 of the 40 suppliers we read on 3 August 2026 claimed a guarantee of some kind.
What can you tell me about my own site, then?
Whether a page exists for a given service, whether a reader can reach it without asking, whether a machine can read it, and whether the figures on it were approved inside the firm. Those are observations rather than assessments.
What does the Price Transparency Pack cost?
£890, fixed and published, delivered in ten working days. It builds the price and service pages on an existing site. Nothing is priced per enquiry or per matter, because LASPO 2012 section 56 binds the paying firm as well as the party paid.