What has to go in a client care letter, and why it takes so long

What the Code actually asks for #

Section 8 of the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors, RELs and RFLs is short, and almost none of it is about wording. Three paragraphs carry the weight.

• Say who you act for 8.1

  Requires that “You identify who you are acting for in relation to any matter”.

• Make sure they understand 8.6

  Requires that “You give clients information in a way they can understand” and that 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”.

• Be straight about money 8.7

  Clients must 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”.

Complaints sit in the same section. Clients must be given written notice at engagement of their right to complain and of the Legal Ombudsman, and where a complaint has not been resolved to their satisfaction within eight weeks they must be told in writing of any right to complain to the Ombudsman and of alternative dispute resolution options. The standard itself is blunt.

The regulator has already said what is wrong with most of them #

This is unusual and worth quoting. The SRA published guidance on client care letters on 25 November 2019, and it opens by naming the problem.

It names the faults directly: letters that are "complicated, with legalistic language, terms and phrasing", and letters that are "too lengthy, with dense paragraphs and small font sizes". It also makes the connection to complaints explicit. "One of the most common complaints made to the Legal Ombudsman is about a lack of clarity around costs," the guidance says, tying that directly back to paragraph 8.7.

Those are complaint types for 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026. The four things the SRA guidance says a letter should get across are plainer than most firms' first page.

The letter is only the visible half of opening a matter #

Ask a fee earner how long the letter takes and you will get a number for drafting. That is not where the file sits. Before the letter is worth sending, this has all happened.

1. Run a conflict check

2. Form a client and matter risk assessment

3. Open a file with a number and a responsible fee earner

4. Record the funding position

5. Set a costs estimate

6. Put the first key dates somewhere

That work is the reason a matter opened on a Tuesday can still be waiting on Friday, and almost none of it produces a document anyone outside the firm ever sees. The onboarding and client due diligence page covers the identity half of the same sequence.

Where the hours actually go #

Assembly

The letter is built from facts the firm already holds: the client's details, the matter type, the fee earner, the basis of charging, the estimate. In most firms those facts are typed a second time into a template because the enquiry note and the letter live in different places. This is the same re-keying that shows up in every other sector, and it is the single most mechanical thing in the whole sequence.

Variation

There is rarely one letter. There is a conveyancing one, a probate one, an employment one, a version for a fixed fee and a version for an hourly rate, a version with a conditional fee agreement attached. Each was edited by a different person at a different time, and nobody is quite sure which is current.

Return

The letter goes out and then has to come back. Between those two events sits a gap that belongs to nobody, and matters routinely sit in it for weeks while everyone assumes the file is progressing. Knowing which letters have gone and not returned is a question with a factual answer, and in most firms the only way to get it is to open files one at a time.

The obligation that does not stop at engagement #

That is one of the clearest places where an administrative habit and a regulatory standard are the same thing, and it is closely related to what the complaints data says about silence.

What runs on rules here, and what does not #

What this page will not give you #

No wording is compliant in the abstract, because paragraph 8.6 is about whether a particular client understood, and nobody outside your firm can judge that. Any supplier offering a letter that guarantees compliance is offering you their risk appetite rather than an answer.

What can be said plainly is that the drafting is the small half. The assembly, the version control and the chase for a signature are the large half, and they behave like every other dated list in a business. If you want a number for that before you decide anything, the cost of admin time calculator is the place to start, and the free audit counts it properly.