Price transparency for employment tribunal claims (unfair and wrongful dismissal)
Claims for unfair or wrongful dismissal before the employment tribunal. The rule applies from both sides: firms acting for individuals bringing claims, and firms acting for employers defending them. If your firm's website offers this service, Rule 1 of the SRA Transparency Rules sets out exactly what price information the site must publish.
Sources last verified: 2026-08-14.1 — official SRA links are cited in each section.
Does this apply to your firm?
Any regulated firm whose website offers to bring unfair or wrongful dismissal claims for individuals, or to defend them for businesses. Firms that act only in other employment matters (discrimination claims, settlement agreements) are outside the mandatory rule for those services — but a page that mixes them together needs to say which prices the rule's disclosures attach to.
What must be published for employment tribunal claims (unfair and wrongful dismissal)
- Ranges banded by complexity — typically simple, medium and high — with realistic figures for each, not a single blended number.
- The factors that move a case up a band: preliminary hearings, contested disclosure, multiple witnesses, allegations of discrimination or whistleblowing attached to the dismissal claim, litigants in person on the other side.
- The basis of charging (hourly rates or fixed stages) and whether VAT applies.
- If you offer conditional fee or damages-based agreements: the circumstances in which the client may still have to pay — including the other side's costs — as the rule specifically requires.
- Who does the work: experience and qualifications of fee earners and supervisors.
- Key stages — ACAS early conciliation, claim and response (ET1/ET3), preliminary hearing, disclosure and witness statements, final hearing — with likely timescales to a final hearing for each band.
Official source: SRA — Transparency in price and service guidance · Sources last verified: 2026-08-11
Disbursements to describe
Disbursements are costs payable to third parties that your firm handles on the client's behalf. The rule expects them described and priced (or ranged) — for this service that typically means:
- Counsel's fees for preliminary and final hearings, typically quoted per day of hearing with a range by seniority.
- Expert reports where relevant (for example medical evidence on capability dismissals).
- Travel and courier costs where you charge them.
For every disbursement, say whether VAT applies to it — mixing VAT-inclusive fees with VAT-silent third-party costs is one of the most frequent findings on otherwise careful pages.
Common gaps on live sites
One flat “tribunal claims from £5,000” figure with no complexity bands and no explanation of what makes a case expensive.
Counsel's hearing fees omitted, so the range understates the real cost of getting to a final hearing.
CFA or DBA arrangements advertised without the required explanation of when the client pays.
No timescale from claim to hearing — the single fact most clients ask about first.
These are patterns seen across real firm websites — none of them implies bad faith. Pages get edited, calculators break, and requirements written for lawyers get trimmed by marketing. That's an argument for checking the live page regularly, not for blame.
Is your employment tribunal claims (unfair and wrongful dismissal) page still saying what it should?
FirmProof runs automated monitoring checks against your live public pages every week and keeps dated evidence of what was found. Start with the free scan — no account, one scan a day.
Check your own site