What must a UK solicitor's website show under the SRA Transparency Rules in 2026?

Why a solicitor's website is now partly a regulated document

For most local businesses a website is marketing. For an SRA-regulated firm it is also, in part, a regulatory document. Price and service transparency has been mandatory for several years, and the current version of the SRA Transparency Rules has applied since 11 April 2025. The regulator's own three-year evaluation of the rules found that although the vast majority of firms declared themselves compliant, only 42% said they were publishing all the required information. The SRA continues to check firms' websites and takes action against those wilfully failing to comply. In other words, a thin or missing website is not just a lost enquiry; it can be a compliance gap.

Which services trigger the price-publishing rules?

The rules do not cover every kind of legal work. They target the everyday services where consumers and small businesses benefit most from being able to compare before they commit. If your firm advertises any of these for individuals, the pricing requirements apply.

• Residential conveyancing: freehold or leasehold sales, purchases, and mortgages or re-mortgages.
• Estate administration (uncontested probate) where all the assets are in the UK.
• Immigration applications, excluding asylum.
• Immigration Tribunal appeals against Home Office visa or immigration decisions, excluding asylum.
• Motoring offences: summary road-traffic offences dealt with at a single magistrates' court hearing.
• Employment Tribunal claims for unfair or wrongful dismissal, acting for the employee.

For business clients, three further services are covered:

• Defending an Employment Tribunal claim for unfair or wrongful dismissal, acting for the employer.
• Debt recovery up to £100,000.
• Applications for a licence to run business premises, for example alcohol or entertainment licensing.

If none of these appear on your website, you may fall outside the price-publishing rules. But the badge, complaints and regulatory-status requirements below still apply to every regulated firm with a website.

What price and service information has to appear?

For each covered service, the SRA expects the pricing to be clear, accessible and in a prominent place, not buried behind a 'request a quote' form. The rules set out what each covered-service page must include.

• The total cost of the service or, where that is not practicable, an average cost or a realistic range.
• The basis of your charges, including any hourly rates or fixed fees.
• A description and likely cost of disbursements, such as search fees, court fees or Land Registry fees, with an average or range where the exact figure is not yet known.
• Whether your fees and any disbursements attract VAT, and the amounts.
• What is included in the quoted price, the key stages of the matter, and likely timescales.
• The experience and qualifications of the people who will carry out the work, and anyone supervising them.
• Any circumstances in which clients may have to make payments themselves, for example under a conditional-fee or damages-based agreement.

The parts every regulated firm's website needs, even without price pages

Two requirements apply to any SRA-regulated firm with a website, whatever services it offers.

• A complaints procedure: your website must explain how and when a client can complain, and how and when they can take a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman and to the SRA.
• The SRA's digital badge: firms with a website must display the SRA's clickable digital badge in a prominent place. It links to confirmation that your firm is regulated and the protections clients get as a result.

Your letterhead and emails must also show your SRA authorisation number and the words 'authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority'. The website badge is the online equivalent: a visible, verifiable sign that a client is dealing with a regulated firm rather than an unregulated adviser.

Turning a compliance chore into a reason to be chosen

It is easy to treat all of this as box-ticking. But look at it from the client's side. Someone comparing two local firms for a house purchase or a probate matter is doing exactly what the rules intend: weighing price, scope and who will actually handle the work. The firm whose website answers those questions clearly wins the instruction; the firm that hides behind 'contact us' loses it before the phone rings. Transparency you have to provide anyway is far more persuasive when it is presented well.

Is a Google Business Profile or a legal directory enough?

A Google Business Profile helps people find you when they search 'solicitor near me' or 'conveyancing quote' plus a town, and legal directories can send enquiries. Neither can carry what the SRA requires. A Google listing has nowhere to publish compliant price and service information, cannot host your complaints procedure, and cannot display the clickable SRA badge. Directories present your firm on someone else's page, in their format, next to competitors, often for a fee. They are useful feeders into your website; they are not a substitute for it.

A website checklist for a UK law firm in 2026

• Firm name, the towns you serve and your main practice areas in the first mobile screen.
• A dedicated, clearly signposted page for each covered service, with prices, VAT, disbursements, key stages and likely timescales.
• Named fee earners and supervisors with their experience and qualifications.
• A complaints page covering your own process, the Legal Ombudsman and the SRA.
• The SRA digital badge, clickable, in a prominent place.
• A tappable phone number and a simple enquiry route on every page.
• Plain-English explanations of your services for clients who are not lawyers.
• Correct regulatory wording on the site, matching your letterhead and emails.

How LESTO would build a UK solicitor's website

LESTO would build a clear, mobile-first site that does the regulatory job and the marketing job at once: a covered-service page for each area you offer, with pricing, VAT and disbursements laid out the way the SRA expects; the complaints information and clickable SRA badge in place; named fee earners with their experience; and enquiry routes that are easy to find. When a fee changes, a disbursement is updated, or you add a service line, you send the change to LESTO by WhatsApp or email and it is live the same day, so the compliance pages never drift out of date because updating them was a project.

The decision

For a UK firm, a website is no longer optional and no longer purely marketing. The SRA Transparency Rules make it the place where price, scope, complaints and regulatory status have to live, and the regulator is checking. Treated as a grudging obligation, that is a cost. Handled well, it is the clearest way to show a comparing client that you are open, regulated and worth instructing. If clients still ring to ask what a matter will cost, or a website check would find gaps, the site is not yet doing its job.