Council for Licensed Conveyancers: Informed choice to aid consumer decision making

As a regulator we believe that providing clear information to consumers makes good business sense.  

Since recommendations by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in 2016 to improve transparency by firms on price, service and quality to help customers navigate the sector more easily and get value for money, significant improvements have been made.  

We require, and regularly check, that all of our practices publish price, service and quality information on their websites (or in alternative formats if requested). 

We encourage CLC practices to see these requirements as a guide to good practice in presenting to consumers the features and costs of the services they are buying. Our Informed Choices toolkit helps them do that.  

Our own monitoring shows that compliance by CLC practices is very high and that since the rules were introduced in 2018, practices tell us that clients are shopping around more before instructing them.  

Where practices are falling short, we take a hands-on approach in ensuring they come into compliance while being ready to take other regulatory steps if necessary. 

The CLC continues to believe that while price is important for consumers it is not the only way that users of legal services should select their provider. As well as supporting the transparency measures currently in place, we pressed throughout 2020 for joint work to advance this agenda particularly through the use of quality indicators, which also featured as a recommendation in the CMA’s report. In late 2020 we, the SRA and CILEx Regulation took steps to scope and launch a joint pilot scheme to encourage greater use of digital comparison tools and quality indicators in the form of client feedback. This work is ongoing.    

We also have our own Customer Charter.  

The charter sets out five key points for consumers, namely:  

1. Your specialist lawyer is subject to robust regulation.
2. Your best interests are served.
3. The fees you pay are clear and transparent.
4. Your money is held separately from the practice’s own funds and is kept safely.
5. If something goes wrong, you are protected.  

 You can read the Customer Charter here.