SRA price transparency: an operations guide for intake

The SRA Transparency Rules require firms that offer certain services to publish price and service information in a prominent place on their website, along with their complaints procedure. For most firms that page was written once, checked by the compliance officer and left alone. That is a missed opportunity, because price is the first thing most people compare. The Legal Services Consumer Panel's 2025 tracker found that among people who shopped around for a legal service, 56 per cent compared on price, ahead of reputation at 48 per cent. The price page is not only a regulatory requirement. It is part of your intake.

This post is about the operational side: what the rules cover, and how the page, the phone line and the first call can work together. It is not legal or regulatory advice. The rules themselves and the SRA's guidance are the authority, and your COLP should decide how they apply to your firm.

It is part of our series on revenue operations for law firms.

What do the SRA Transparency Rules require?

In outline, the rules ask for two things.

Price and service information for certain services. Where a firm publishes that it offers one of the listed services, it must publish, for that service:

• The total cost, or where that is not practicable, an average cost or a range.
• The basis of the charges, for example hourly rates or fixed fees.
• The experience and qualifications of anyone carrying out the work and of their supervisors.
• Disbursements, with a description and cost, or an average or range where the cost cannot be known.
• Whether VAT is payable and how much.
• The key stages of the matter, an indication of timescales, and what is and is not included.
• For conditional fee or damages-based agreements, the circumstances in which the client may have to pay.

Complaints information. Firms must publish details of their complaints procedure, including how and when a complaint can be made to the Legal Ombudsman and to the SRA.

The information must be clear and accessible and in a prominent place on the firm's website. A firm without a website must make it available on request.

Which services are covered?

The SRA's list, as published at the time of writing, is:

For individuals:

• Residential conveyancing: purchase, sale, freehold, leasehold and remortgage.
• Probate: uncontested estate administration where all assets are in the UK.
• Immigration: applications, excluding asylum, and First-tier Tribunal appeals, excluding asylum.
• Motoring offences: summary offences in the magistrates' court.
• Employment tribunals: claims for unfair or wrongful dismissal, for the employee.

For businesses:

• Employment tribunals: defending unfair or wrongful dismissal claims.
• Debt recovery: up to £100,000.
• Licensing applications: for business premises.

Read the rules themselves for the precise scope and exclusions, which matter. The SRA's guidance also makes clear that the rules bite where a firm publishes that it offers the service as part of its usual business.

Why does this matter for intake?

Because price is usually the first question, and it is the one reception is least equipped to answer.

A caller wants to know roughly what a remortgage or an unfair dismissal claim will cost. Reception, sensibly, does not want to quote. The fee-earner is busy. So the caller hears "someone will call you back", and meanwhile they look at two other firms' websites and find a clear range on one of them.

Handled well, the published information does three jobs at once:

• It answers the first question before the call. Some callers will have read it. They ring ready to instruct, not to ask.
• It qualifies. A caller who has seen the range and still rings is more likely to proceed. A caller for whom the range is out of reach finds out without using a fee-earner's time.
• It gives reception something to say. "Our published fees for a standard remortgage are on our website, and a solicitor will confirm the figure for your case" is an honest, useful answer that stays within what reception should say.

The wider background: the Competition and Markets Authority's 2016 legal services market study concluded that competition for individual consumers and small businesses was not working well, and called for greater transparency from providers. The Transparency Rules are part of the regulatory response to that. The practical upshot for a firm is that clients now expect to see a price.

How do you make the price page work harder?

Start from what the caller needs to decide, not from the minimum the rule requires.

Put a range up front, and explain what moves it. "Our fees for a freehold purchase are typically between X and Y plus VAT. The main things that change that are the price of the property, whether it is leasehold, and whether there is a mortgage." A reader can place themselves in that range.

Name the stages in plain English. Clients want to know what happens and when. Stages double as a script for the first call.

Say what is not included. It prevents the complaint later and it answers a question callers ask.

Say who does the work. The rule requires experience and qualifications. A short paragraph on the team, with the supervising solicitor named, also builds trust.

Link it from everywhere. The practice area page, the contact page, the footer. A prominent page that nobody can find does not help the firm or the client.

Keep it current. An out-of-date range creates friction on every call. Put a review date in the diary.

Check every change with whoever in the firm owns SRA compliance. The point here is that the page should be written for the client, and the regulatory minimum is the floor rather than the target.

Who should own the price page?

One named person, usually the head of the team that does the work, with the COLP signing off changes. Not marketing on its own, because marketing does not know when disbursements change, and not compliance on its own, because compliance will write it for the regulator rather than the client.

The owner's job is small but regular: check the figures against what fee-earners are actually quoting, update the page when fees or the team change, and tell reception when it moves so the phone and the page stay in step.

How should the first call use the published information?

Build it into the questions, not into a sales pitch.

A reasonable pattern for a covered service:

• Take the details and the deadline first. Urgency decides who calls back and when.
• Ask whether they have seen the published fees. If yes, ask whether the matter looks standard or has any unusual features. If no, tell them where to find it, and send the link if you can.
• Do not quote a final figure on the first call unless the firm has decided that reception may. Confirming a price is a fee-earner's decision.
• Say what happens next, and when. "A solicitor will call you by 4pm today to confirm the fee for your purchase."

For services outside the rules, the same thinking applies. Callers still want an idea of cost, and the same reasoning may apply to a firm that chooses to publish a range for them. Whether and how to do that is a decision for the firm.

A worked example

The figures and the firm are invented to show the method. They do not describe a real firm.

A firm's conveyancing team reviews a month of first calls. Around half of callers ask about price in the first minute. Reception's standard answer is "I will get someone to call you back". Some callers never pick up the call back.

The team makes three changes. It rewrites the price page with a range for each type of transaction, the main factors that move it, and the stages. It adds the page link to the web form confirmation and the out-of-hours message. And it gives reception a one-sentence answer that points to the published range and promises a confirmed quote by a set time.

A month later, fewer first calls are spent on price, the fee-earners' call backs start from "you have seen our range, let me confirm it for your purchase", and the team can see how many callers who were sent the page went on to instruct. The exact effect is something each firm has to measure for itself, using the method in how to measure your enquiry-to-instruction conversion rate.

What mistakes should you avoid?

Hiding the page. The rule says prominent. So does common sense.

Ranges so wide they mean nothing. A range from a few hundred pounds to several thousand for a standard purchase does not help anybody decide.

Letting reception improvise quotes. Consistency matters more than speed here. Give them a sentence, and a time by which a fee-earner will confirm.

Forgetting out of hours. A lot of people read price pages in the evening. If they ring at 7pm and reach voicemail, the page has done its work and the firm has not. The options are in who answers your law firm's phone after five.

Treating it as done. Prices, teams and disbursements change. So should the page.

A checklist for reviewing your price page

Run through this with the team that does the work and whoever owns SRA compliance. It takes an hour.

• Can a stranger find it from the home page in one or two clicks, on a phone?
• Does each covered service have its own section, with a total cost or a meaningful range?
• Is the basis of charging clear, and is VAT shown?
• Are disbursements listed, with costs or ranges, in words a client understands?
• Are the key stages and timescales set out in the order the client will experience them?
• Does it say what is not included?
• Does it name who does the work and who supervises, with their experience?
• Is the complaints information there, including the Legal Ombudsman and SRA routes?
• Is there a review date and a named owner?
• Does the page say how to get in touch, including out of hours, and what will happen next?
• Do reception and the out-of-hours message point to it?
• Do the prices on the page match what fee-earners actually quote? If they do not, fix one or the other.

The last question matters more than it looks. A caller who sees one figure online and hears a very different one on the phone does not trust either. The page and the call have to tell the same story.

Where WasilX fits

The price page answers the first question. The phone line has to answer the second. Cam, our AI Engagement Coordinator, takes calls on the firm's line at any hour, says it is AI, takes the caller's details and deadline, asks the firm's qualification questions and books the call back. It passes every enquiry to the right fee-earner with a written summary, so the price conversation starts from what the caller already said. Confirming a fee stays with the firm, and Cam never gives legal advice.

If you would like to look at how your price page and your phone line work together, we are happy to go through it with you.

Frequently asked questions

Do the SRA Transparency Rules apply to every law firm? They apply to SRA-regulated firms that publish that they offer one of the listed services. Check the rules and the SRA's guidance for your firm's position.

Can we publish a range instead of a fixed price? The rules allow a total cost, or an average or range where a total is not practicable. Make the range meaningful.

Should reception quote prices on the phone? That is the firm's decision. A consistent approach is to point to the published information and have a fee-earner confirm the figure.