SRA regulated law firms will be required to publish price information from December
SRA regulated law firms will be required to publish price information for certain services from December 2018. The services covered are:
Consumer Services
- - Conveyancing
- - Probate
- - Motoring offences
- - Employment tribunals (claims for unfair or wrongful dismissal)
- - Immigration (excluding asylum)
Business Services
- - Debt recovery (up to £100k)
- - Employment tribunals (defending claims for unfair or wrongful dismissal)
- - Licensing applications for business premises
The announcement from the SRA comes hot on the heels of a similar announcement by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) earlier this month.
In addition, the SRA will be developing a digital badge scheme that firms will display in order to “promote the public protections being regulated provides customers”.
Alongside the published reforms, the SRA has also released the findings of its Better information in the legal services market research report, which found that 85% of people “want information about legal services providers to be more readily available, especially in relation to price, quality and protections”.
According to the SRA:
“In our CMA action plan, we committed to bringing transparency requirements into force by the end of 2018. Subject to LSB approval, we therefore expect to introduce our requirements regarding firms publishing prices, service information and details of how to make a complaint, from December 2018.”
Draft guidance on price and service transparency has been published by the SRA and notes that “Appropriate instant online quote generators can be used to provide price transparency”.
Our online quote generator currently allows you to generate instant fee estimates for a number of legal services covered by the rules, including conveyancing and probate. We are also in consultation to extend our tools so that they include the other areas of law covered by both the CLC and SRA’s new rules so that you can:
- - Provide the client with an instant fee estimate where possible
- - Where it is not possible , let the client know of any costs that are known at the outset (such as hourly rates or fixed fees for certain elements)