An SRA-regulated firm must show its SRA number and the SRA digital badge prominently, publish its complaints procedure with Legal Ombudsman and SRA routes, and publish prices for any specified services it advertises, such as residential conveyancing and uncontested probate. Companies and LLPs must also show their registered name, number and office address.
General information, not legal or regulatory advice
This guide summarises official rules and guidance as we read them on 25 September 2026. It is not legal advice. Your firm's structure and services change what applies, so confirm anything important with the SRA's Professional Ethics helpline, your compliance officer or your own adviser.
Which firms do the SRA Transparency Rules cover?
They cover every firm the SRA authorises, and individual freelance solicitors practising in the circumstances set out in regulation 10.2(b) of the SRA Authorisation of Individuals Regulations. The current version of the rules has been in effect since 11 April 2025.
There are four parts: price information for specified services (rule 1), complaints information (rule 2), what to do without a website (rule 3) and regulatory information, including the digital badge (rule 4). If you have no website, you must make the rule 1 and rule 2 information available on request instead.
Which services need published prices?
Only the services listed in rules 1.3 and 1.4, and only if you publicise that you offer them. Publicly funded work is excluded (rule 1.2).
| Client type | Service covered by the price rules |
|---|---|
| Individuals | Residential conveyancing: freehold or leasehold sales and purchases, and mortgages or remortgages |
| Individuals | Collecting and distributing a deceased person's assets within the UK, where the matter is not contested |
| Individuals | Preparing and submitting immigration applications, excluding asylum |
| Individuals | Advice and representation at the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) on appeals against Home Office visa or immigration decisions, excluding asylum appeals |
| Individuals | Advice and representation at the magistrates' court on summary-only road traffic offences dealt with at a single hearing |
| Individuals | Advice and representation for employees bringing Employment Tribunal claims for unfair or wrongful dismissal |
| Businesses | Advice and representation for employers defending Employment Tribunal claims for unfair or wrongful dismissal |
| Businesses | Debt recovery up to £100,000 |
| Businesses | Advice, assistance and representation on licensing applications for business premises |
If you are budgeting a rebuild around these pages, our law firm website cost guide sets out our published prices.
What must the price information include?
Rule 1.5 lists seven items, and rule 1.6 says the information must be clear, accessible and in a prominent place on your website.
- The total cost of the service or, where that is not practicable, the average cost or range of costs.
- The basis for your charges, including any hourly rates or fixed fees.
- The experience and qualifications of the people doing the work, and of their supervisors.
- A description and the cost of any likely disbursements, or an average or range where the actual cost is not known.
- Whether fees and disbursements attract VAT, and if so how much.
- What the price includes, the key stages and likely timescales, and anything people might reasonably expect to be included that is not.
- If you use conditional fee or damages-based agreements, the circumstances in which clients may have to pay themselves, including from damages.
The SRA's guidance adds mandatory points. State whether prices include VAT and, if they do, the amount or percentage. Say on your website if you are not VAT-registered. Make clear if the price depends on how you deliver the service, for example face-to-face or online. If you offer an online quote calculator, it must produce a quote without the person having to wait for a call from the firm.
The rules do not require a binding quote for every scenario. The SRA says publishing the typical cost of a service is acceptable, as is a mathematical average.
What must the complaints information say?
Rule 2.1 requires you to publish details of your complaints handling procedure on your website, including how and when a complaint can be made to the Legal Ombudsman and to the SRA.
The SRA publishes suggested wording, written with the Legal Ombudsman, which you can adapt; you do not have to use it. It reflects the Legal Ombudsman's time limits as changed from 1 April 2023: a complaint has to reach the Ombudsman within six months of your final response, and no more than one year from the act or omission complained about, or from when the client should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint. Check the Legal Ombudsman's current rules before you publish.
Linking the procedure from your footer and your contact page makes it easy to find, which is the point of a transparency rule.
What is the SRA digital badge, and where does it go?
It is the SRA's clickable logo, which confirms to visitors that your firm is regulated. Rule 4.1 requires an authorised firm to display its SRA number and the digital badge in a prominent place on its website. For a licensed body with a separate website for its legal services, that means the legal services site.
The SRA's clickable logo pages add:
- Displaying the badge became mandatory on 25 November 2019. It is free for SRA-regulated firms.
- It is supplied as a piece of code through the SRA's technology partner, Yoshki, and only works on website addresses recorded against your firm in mySRA. Allow at least 24 hours after updating your details, or up to five working days if you are adding several sites or subdomains.
- The badge shows the current date so visitors can see it is valid. A copied static image will not update.
- It can only be used on your website, not in print or email.
- You still need to say you are regulated by the SRA and give your SRA number; the badge does not replace that.
Rule 4.2 separately requires letterheads and emails to show your SRA authorisation number and the words “authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority”. Using the same wording in your website footer keeps everything consistent.
What company or LLP details must the website show?
If your firm is a limited company or an LLP, its website must show its registered name, registered number, registered office address and the part of the UK where it is registered. That comes from the Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015.
Regulation 24 requires the registered name on websites, and regulation 25 adds the other particulars. Companies House's guidance for LLPs says the same applies to LLPs, including on any part of a website relating to the LLP that it has authorised. A company exempt from using “limited” in its name must still disclose that it is a limited company. GOV.UK also says that if you include directors' names on this material, you must list all of them.
Traditional partnerships and sole practitioners trading under a business name follow Part 41 of the Companies Act 2006 instead. Section 1202 lists business letters, written orders, invoices and receipts, and written demands for payment; it does not mention websites. The Electronic Commerce Regulations, covered below, still apply to your site.
Do I have to publish professional indemnity insurance details?
If you are required to hold professional indemnity insurance, you must make information about it available, in particular the insurer's contact details and the territorial coverage. That is regulation 8(1)(n) of the Provision of Services Regulations 2009.
The regulations allow several ways to make information available, including making it easily accessible electronically at an address you supply. A short page on your website, linked from the footer, is a straightforward way to do that. The Provision of Services (Amendment and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2026 come into force on 1 October 2026, so check the updated text on legislation.gov.uk after that date.
Solicitors who provide services to the public outside an SRA-regulated firm have an extra duty under Transparency Rule 4.3. If they are not required to meet the SRA's minimum terms and conditions of insurance, they must tell all clients this before engagement, say so if alternative insurance arrangements are in place, and where applicable tell clients they cannot apply for a grant from the SRA Compensation Fund.
What other business details belong in the footer?
Your name, address, email, regulator and professional rules. The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 require anyone providing an “information society service” to make these details easily, directly and permanently accessible (regulation 6):
- your name and the geographic address where you are established;
- contact details, including an email address;
- any public register you are on, such as the register of companies, and your number in it;
- for a regulated profession, your professional body, your professional title and where it was granted, and a reference to the professional rules that apply with how to access them; and
- your VAT number, if the activity is subject to VAT.
The same regulation says any prices you show must be clear and unambiguous, including whether they include tax. Linking to the SRA Standards and Regulations is a practical way to cover the professional rules point. If you mark up your firm with structured data, keep the name and address identical to the footer; our schema checker shows what a page currently declares.
What are the accessibility and privacy basics?
Give privacy information where you collect data, get consent for cookies that are not essential, and design for disabled clients from the start.
- Privacy. Enquiry forms collect personal and sometimes sensitive information. Under the UK GDPR right to be informed, you must give privacy information at the time you collect it, covering who you are, your purposes and lawful basis, who you share data with, how long you keep it, people's rights and their right to complain to a supervisory authority. The ICO says it must be concise, transparent, intelligible, easily accessible and in clear, plain language.
- Cookies. PECR requires you to tell people about cookies and similar technologies, explain what they do and get consent, unless they are strictly necessary for the service the user asked for. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 added exceptions, including one for statistical purposes aimed at improving your site, provided you give clear information and a simple, free way to object. The ICO says advertising purposes still need consent.
- Accessibility. GOV.UK says all UK service providers must make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010, or the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 in Northern Ireland. The public sector accessibility regulations apply to public sector bodies. If you are not one, WCAG 2.2 level AA is still a sensible target to design and test against.
Put all of this into your website project brief so it is scoped from the start rather than bolted on at launch.
What do barristers need to show instead?
Barristers are regulated by the Bar Standards Board, whose transparency rules have been in force since 1 July 2019. They apply to sole practitioners, chambers and BSB entities on every website they operate, including individual barristers' own sites. The general mandatory rules require you to:
- state that clients may contact you for a quotation, and give contact details;
- state your most commonly used pricing models, such as fixed fee or hourly rate, your main areas of practice, a description of your most common services, and the factors that can affect timescales;
- put the right wording on the homepage: “regulated by the Bar Standards Board” for sole practitioners, “barristers regulated by the Bar Standards Board” for chambers, and “authorised and regulated by the Bar Standards Board” for BSB entities;
- explain your complaints procedure, any right to complain to the Legal Ombudsman, how to do so and any time limits; and
- link to the Legal Ombudsman's decision data and to the Barristers' Register on the BSB website.
Barristers doing Public Access work must also link to the BSB's Public Access guidance for lay clients, and extra price rules apply to certain Public Access services.
What should be on the checklist?
Use this for a new build or an audit. “Where to show it” is our practical suggestion unless the source sets a location.
| Requirement | Who it applies to | Where to show it | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| SRA number and SRA digital badge | SRA-authorised firms | Prominent place on the website, such as a site-wide footer | SRA Transparency Rule 4.1 |
| SRA number and “authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority” | SRA-authorised firms | Letterhead and emails; footer for consistency | SRA Transparency Rule 4.2 |
| Complaints procedure, with Legal Ombudsman and SRA routes | SRA firms and freelance solicitors | Complaints page linked from the footer | SRA Transparency Rule 2.1 |
| Price and service information | Firms publicising the specified services | Prominently, on or linked from each relevant service page | SRA Transparency Rules 1.1 to 1.6 |
| VAT treatment of prices, and VAT registration status | Firms publishing prices | Alongside the prices | SRA price and service guidance |
| Registered name, number, registered office and part of the UK | Companies and LLPs | Footer or legal page | 2015 Trading Disclosures Regulations, regs 24 and 25 |
| Insurer contact details and territorial cover | Providers required to hold professional indemnity insurance | Page linked from the footer | Provision of Services Regulations 2009, reg 8(1)(n) |
| Insurance and Compensation Fund position | Solicitors providing services outside an SRA-regulated firm | Before engagement | SRA Transparency Rule 4.3 |
| Name, address, email, register number, regulator and professional rules, VAT number | Providers of information society services | Footer, contact or about page | Electronic Commerce Regulations 2002, reg 6 |
| Privacy information at the point of collection | Anyone collecting personal data | Privacy notice linked from every form | ICO: right to be informed |
| Cookie information and consent, unless an exception applies | Sites using non-essential cookies or similar technologies | Cookie banner and cookie policy | PECR; ICO storage and access guidance |
| Reasonable adjustments; WCAG 2.2 AA as a design target | All service providers | Whole site | GOV.UK accessibility guidance; W3C WCAG 2.2 |
| BSB wording on the homepage, pricing models, complaints information and required links | Barristers, chambers and BSB entities | Homepage and every website they operate | BSB transparency rules |
Where can I check these sources myself?
Sources and further reading. These are the official pages this guide relies on. We checked each one on 25 September 2026. Where we could not verify a point from an official source, we left it out.
- SRA Transparency Rules (version in effect from 11 April 2025) (Solicitors Regulation Authority), checked 25 September 2026.
- Transparency in price and service: guidance (Solicitors Regulation Authority), checked 25 September 2026.
- Publishing complaints procedure: guidance (Solicitors Regulation Authority), checked 25 September 2026.
- Clickable logo (digital badge) (Solicitors Regulation Authority), checked 25 September 2026.
- Clickable logo Q&A (Solicitors Regulation Authority), checked 25 September 2026.
- Company, LLP and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015, regulation 24 (legislation.gov.uk), checked 25 September 2026.
- Company, LLP and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015, regulation 25 (legislation.gov.uk), checked 25 September 2026.
- Limited liability partnerships: incorporation and names (Companies House (GOV.UK)), checked 25 September 2026.
- Running a limited company: signs, stationery and promotional material (GOV.UK), checked 25 September 2026.
- Companies Act 2006, section 1202 (legislation.gov.uk), checked 25 September 2026.
- Provision of Services Regulations 2009, regulation 8 (legislation.gov.uk), checked 25 September 2026.
- Provision of Services (Amendment and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2026 (legislation.gov.uk), checked 25 September 2026.
- Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002, regulation 6 (legislation.gov.uk), checked 25 September 2026.
- Transparency rules for barristers (Bar Standards Board), checked 25 September 2026.
- Right to be informed (Information Commissioner's Office), checked 25 September 2026.
- Guidance on the use of storage and access technologies (Information Commissioner's Office), checked 25 September 2026.
- Understanding accessibility requirements for public sector bodies (GOV.UK), checked 25 September 2026.
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 (W3C), checked 25 September 2026.
This guide is general information, not legal advice. Check with the SRA, the BSB or your own adviser before making decisions. If you spot something out of date, our corrections policy explains how to tell us.