SRA’s Transparency Rules – Survey of Websites

A survey carried out by DG Legal covering the websites of over 400 firms in May 2020 has found that the majority of law firms have not understood the SRA’s Transparency Rules. There is a myth that the rules cover only prices. There are rules also cover use of the digital badge, complaints handling, and the firm’s SRA number.

Around 90% of all firms aren’t fully complying with Price Transparency rules and almost ¾ aren’t complying the rules for publishing complaints handling information. Further, a quarter of all firms included in the survey did not display the SRA’s clickable logo (digital badge).

The SRA have been contacting firms that aren’t fully complying with the rules asking them to comply within a period of one month. For firms that do not do so, follow up action is taken and regulatory action is taken with those that do not engage.

Whilst the SRA have postponed any further sweeps during the current crisis they are pressing on with enforcement action against firms that they’ve previously identified as non-compliant.

Compliance Officers should familiarise themselves with the rules on the SRA’s website and use this quieter period to review their websites.

The results of the survey were presented in our SRA Transparency Rules webinar, a recording of the webinar can be viewed on our Training Courses page or by downloading the SRA Transparency Rules Webinar Slides.