Price transparency

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.