Costs Information to Clients: Paragraph 8.7 Is a Continuing Duty, Not a Client Care Letter

Costs is not the biggest driver of complaints to the Legal Ombudsman. On the Ombudsman own taxonomy for 2025/26 it accounts for 9 per cent of the complaint types selected, well behind poor communication at 24 per cent and delay at 22 per cent.

But it accounts for 12 per cent of the types upheld. Costs complaints are more likely to be upheld than they are to be raised, which is a different and more uncomfortable fact. When a client complains about costs, they tend to be right.

What paragraph 8.7 actually requires

The obligation sits in the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors, RELs, RFLs and RSLs, in the version in effect from 11 April 2025:

You ensure that clients receive the best possible information about how their matter will be priced and, both at the time of engagement and when appropriate as their matter progresses, about the likely overall cost of the matter and any costs incurred.

Read it slowly, because there are three distinct limbs and two timing triggers. The limbs are how the matter will be priced, the likely overall cost, and costs incurred. The triggers are at the time of engagement, and when appropriate as the matter progresses.

That second trigger is the distinctive feature of the Code obligation, and the one most often treated as discharged by a good client care letter. It is a continuing duty. A costs estimate that was accurate in March and silent in September does not satisfy 8.7, however carefully it was drafted.

One scope limit worth knowing: the Code states that paragraphs 8.1 to 8.11 apply only when you are providing your services to the public or a section of the public. An in-house solicitor not serving the public is outside 8.7.

And the obligation binds the firm as well as the individual. Paragraph 7.1(c) of the Code of Conduct for Firms applies the client information and publicity paragraphs, 8.6 to 8.11, to the firm in their entirety as though references to you were references to the firm. Both can be sanctioned for the same failure.

8.6 is the companion that decides most cases

Paragraph 8.6 requires that you give clients information in a way they can understand, and ensure they are in a position to make informed decisions about the services they need, how their matter will be handled and the options available to them.

So 8.7 sets the content standard and 8.6 sets the comprehensibility standard. A technically complete costs schedule that the client cannot follow breaches 8.6 even where 8.7 is satisfied on its face. Paragraph 3.4, which requires you to consider and take account of your client attributes, needs and circumstances, does real work alongside it for vulnerable clients.

The Ombudsman says the same thing in plainer language. Its guidance, An Ombudsman View of Good Costs Service, now in its third edition of November 2023, states that a client should never be surprised by the bill they receive from their lawyer, and that cost information must be crystal clear to that particular client. Its stated best practice is to provide or confirm cost information in writing.

Costs and complaints are joined at engagement

Complaints information is paragraphs 8.2 to 8.5, not 8.6. The operative one is 8.3, which requires clients to be informed in writing at the time of engagement about their right to complain about your services and your charges, how a complaint can be made and to whom, and any right to complain to the Legal Ombudsman and when.

Note that 8.3(a) expressly covers complaints about charges, so the two subjects arrive together at engagement. Note also the asymmetry of form: 8.3 specifies writing, 8.7 does not specify a medium at all — though in practice, given the Ombudsman position and the reverse-burden problem of proving what was said, writing is the only defensible choice. Paragraph 8.5 then requires complaints to be dealt with promptly, fairly and free of charge. The escalation route is covered in our guide to the Legal Ombudsman complaints process.

How this differs from the Transparency Rules

Firms routinely treat these as one obligation. They are not, and neither discharges the other.

The Transparency Rules speak to the world: a website duty, triggered by advertising one of nine listed services, with a prescriptive content list, excluding publicly funded work, and satisfied by an average or a range. Paragraph 8.7 speaks to one client on one matter: triggered by taking them on, in any matter type, with no list and no exclusions, and requiring information specific enough to be the best possible for that person.

Four differences matter in practice.

• Scope of work. The Transparency Rules cover a closed list. Paragraph 8.7 covers every matter the firm takes on.
• Funding. Rule 1.2 excludes publicly funded work from the Transparency Rules. Paragraph 8.7 applies regardless of how the matter is funded.
• Timing. The website duty is static — it must be up, with no updating trigger. The Code duty is dynamic and continuing.
• Specificity. A published range is expressly acceptable under the Transparency Rules, and will rarely discharge 8.7 for an individual client.

Three places they overlap are worth naming, because they are where firms do one and forget the other. Complaints information is required twice, on the website under Transparency Rule 2.1 and in writing to the client under 8.3 — and SRA spot checks have found firms doing exactly one of the two. Published prices are publicity, so an inaccurate price page breaches paragraph 8.8, which requires publicity relating to charges to be accurate and not misleading, independently of the rules themselves. And conditional fee and damages based agreement disclosure is required twice, generically on the website under rule 1.5(g) and client-specifically under 8.7. Our guide to the SRA Transparency Rules covers the website side in full.

What the Ombudsman data actually shows

The 2025/26 annual complaints data, covering 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026, records 14,259 new complaints, up 37 per cent on 10,447 the previous year, with 8,412 accepted, up 16 per cent. Evidence of poor service was found in 72 per cent of assessed complaints.

On causes, the most common types selected were poor communication at 24 per cent, delay and failure to progress at 22 per cent, and failure to advise at 19 per cent, with costs at 9 per cent and failure to follow instructions at 8 per cent. On uphold, the largest were poor communication at 25 per cent and delay at 19 per cent, with costs at 12 per cent.

The number to take seriously is the remedy. The second most frequent remedy, at 29 per cent of cases, was recommending that providers refund, reduce or waive fees — typically resulting in refunds averaging 3,520 pounds, up from 3,249 pounds the year before. Total remedies came to 3,700,986 pounds. A costs information failure is not an administrative black mark; it is a four-figure refund per instance.

Residential conveyancing accounted for 36 per cent of accepted complaints, with wills and probate and personal injury at 14 per cent each. The sharpest year-on-year rises were immigration and asylum at 49 per cent and residential conveyancing at 41 per cent.

The Ombudsman also sets out the costs themes by area of law, and they are specific enough to audit against: high or unexpected legal costs in child law, where accepted complaints more than doubled from 51 to 106; uncertainty around costs or deductions in personal injury; charges, estimates or deductions not explained clearly in litigation; fees higher than expected and unclear charging arrangements in employment; and costs, billing clarity or refund disputes in immigration and asylum. Its summary of the mechanism is worth quoting: where consumers do not understand what advice is being given, why there are delays, or what they are being charged for, confidence in the overall service can quickly erode.

The named failings in its costs guidance are the same ones every time: unexpected additional costs; not updating the client about the cost of the case as it runs; bills perceived as excessive because the client was not expecting the bill to be as high as it was; unclear billing; and unclear charging structures and funding arrangements. Four of those five are failures of the continuing duty rather than of the initial estimate.

Where the Solicitors Act comes in

One correction first, because it circulates widely: the Solicitors Act 1974 does not require client care letters. That duty comes from the Code — 8.3 in writing at engagement, 8.6 on comprehensibility and 8.7 on costs. The client care letter is the practical vehicle, not a statutory instrument.

What the Act does provide is section 57, which permits a non-contentious business agreement setting remuneration by gross sum, commission, percentage, salary or otherwise, and which must be in writing and signed by the client. Non-contentious business agreements interact with the client right to challenge a bill, and a firm relying on one should understand that the agreement does not displace the 8.6 comprehensibility duty.

Is there any training requirement?

No. The word training appears nowhere in either SRA Code of Conduct, and the continuing competence regime sets no minimum hours. What exists instead is the systems architecture: effective governance, arrangements, systems and controls under paragraph 2.1 of the Code for Firms, records to demonstrate compliance under 2.2, competence under 4.3 and an effective system for supervising client matters under 4.4.

Which means the defensible answer to a costs complaint is not a training record. It is the file: a written estimate at engagement, in language that client could follow, with a dated record of each point at which the estimate was revisited as the matter progressed. That is what 8.7 asks for, and on the Ombudsman data it is the thing most often missing. The same evidence-over-attendance logic runs through the rest of Part 6 and Part 8 of the Code, as set out in our analysis of why paragraph 6.1 has no exception.