Firms could be required to publish hourly rates and prices for services, says SRA

Law firms will be required to publish set fees for legal services including wills, conveyancing and divorce under new Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) proposals. 

It is widely agreed that the serious difficulties faced by the majority of society in being able to access and afford essential legal services are an unacceptable barrier to justice. Legal services have always been highly expensive for private citizens, just as basic healthcare would be almost unaffordable to most people without a publicly funded National Health Service. This has led the Competition and Markets Authority to release a report recommending greater transparency on fees so that firms can offer more competitive services to consumers. Following that report Crispin Passmore, the SRA’s executive director for policy, told The Westminster Legal Policy Forum that the regulator intends to consult this summer on new proposals to require firms to publish prices for certain services.

Passmore was careful to point out that the SRA does not plan to force firms to publish all their information, but intends to phase in reforms in stages. Meanwhile, as Legal Futures reports, new guidance will not force all firms to adopt a fixed-fee model, but may require them to publish their hourly rates and estimate how long a certain service will take to carry out.

However, the proposals have received a mixed response from lawyers. Sally Azarmi, chair of the Law Society’s Small Firms Division, told those gathered at The Westminster Legal Policy Forum that a requirement for firms to publish a price list or details of their hourly rates is “not viable”. Azarmi argued that small firms are already transparent about their prices, otherwise their clients would look elsewhere, and that they do not have the resources to deal with such major changes. Meanwhile, Professor Cosmo Graham, director of the Centre for Consumers and Essential Services, pointed out that an abundance of information does not guarantee better outcomes for consumers, but may create counterproductive “choice overload”.

Nonetheless, the SRA looks set to continue with its consultation regardless this summer.