Price transparency
November 2018
From 6 December 2018, our transparency rules mean you must display prices and service information if you publish that you work in any of the following areas:
- Conveyancing (residential)
- Probate (uncontested)
- Motoring offences (summary offences)
- Immigration (excluding asylum)
- Employment tribunals (unfair/wrongful dismissal)
- Debt recovery (up to £100,000)
- Licensing applications (business premises)
Price information must be presented in a clear and easy to understand format. You must also:
- Provide a total cost, if this is not possible provide an average or range of costs
- Explain the basis of your charges, including any hourly rate or fixed fees
- Highlight likely disbursements, and their costs
- Be clear on whether VAT is included
- For conditional or damages-based fees, explain when clients may have to make payments
For service information you must:
- Explain what services are included for the quoted price
- Highlight any services not included within the price, which a client may reasonably expect to be
- Include information on key stages and typical timescales of these
- Publish the qualifications and experience of anyone carrying out the work and of their supervisors
For firms without a website, you must have this information available upon request in other formats.
To monitor on-going compliance with the transparency rules we are conducting a programme of random web sweeps of firm websites. Read the report on the what we found during our latest sweep, conducted in March/April 2019.
