SRA Transparency Rules checklist for law firm websites
Everything the rules require on a regulated firm's website, in one list you can work through in an afternoon. Three areas: the SRA number and badge, complaints information, and prices.
1. The SRA number and the clickable digital badge
- The firm's SRA number is displayed in a prominent place on the website (Rule 4.1).
- The official badge is displayed on the website (compulsory since 25 November 2019).
- It is the live badge served through the SRA's system, not a saved image: clicking it opens the SRA's confirmation page for your firm.
- It appears somewhere a visitor can find it, typically the footer of every page.
More detail in the digital badge guide.
2. Complaints information
- The website publishes details of the firm's own complaints procedure, including how and when to complain. If a complaint is not resolved within eight weeks, the firm must give the client written information about the Legal Ombudsman.
- It explains how and when a client can complain to the Legal Ombudsman about service.
- It explains how and when a client can complain to the SRA about conduct.
All three parts are needed; naming only the Ombudsman or only the SRA leaves the page incomplete. Detail in the complaints information guide. In our scan this is the item most often not found: the statistics page has the current numbers.
3. Price information, if you offer a listed service
Required for each of these services the firm offers to the public: residential conveyancing, uncontested probate, motoring offences (summary), immigration applications and First-tier Tribunal immigration appeals (excluding asylum), and employment tribunal claims for unfair or wrongful dismissal. For business clients: debt recovery up to 100,000 pounds, employment tribunal defence, and licensing applications.
For each covered service the page must show:
- Total cost, or an average or range with the basis for charges (fixed fee or hourly rate)
- What the price includes and what it does not
- Likely disbursements and their cost
- Whether VAT applies, and if so the amount
- Key stages and typical timescales
- Experience and qualifications of the people doing the work and of their supervisors
- Where relevant, whether clients may have to pay under a conditional fee or damages-based agreement
The information must be prominent enough that a visitor finds it without asking. Full detail in the price transparency guide.
What non-compliance costs
The SRA runs an ongoing programme of web sweeps checking firm websites against these rules. A firm that does not put things right within the period given can receive a fixed penalty of £750, rising to £1,500 for a repeat breach within three years. Between May 2023 and September 2024 alone the SRA reported 439 official warnings and 36 fixed penalty fines for transparency breaches from its website checking work, and the sweeps have continued since. A fixed penalty also draws wider regulatory attention to the firm. The fines and warning letters guide explains the full enforcement process and what to do if a letter arrives.
Check your own site in two minutes
Our scanner reads your public pages and reports which of these items it found and which it did not, page by page with the evidence. Run the free check, and if something is missing, the fixes service can put it right.
Automated findings from public pages only. This is not a legal opinion. For the authoritative text of the rules, see the SRA Transparency Rules on sra.org.uk.