How much will this cost?
What law firms need to publish
Fear of an open-ended bill stops people seeking legal advice at all. Fee transparency is both commercially and ethically the right call.
How customers actually ask it
The same intent arrives in wording your page probably does not use. All of these mean the same thing:
- “How much will this cost?”
- “what are your fees”
- “do you do fixed fees”
- “hourly rate”
- “no win no fee”
What a complete answer contains
For law firms specifically, an answer is only complete when it covers all 5:
- 1
Whether you offer fixed fees, and for which matters
- 2
Hourly rates by seniority, since a matter is rarely handled by one person
- 3
What disbursements are and a realistic estimate — clients routinely miss these
- 4
Whether VAT is included in quoted figures
- 5
Whether conditional or damages-based arrangements are available, and what they actually cost on success
A worked example
Illustrative — not a real business
Fixed fees for conveyancing, wills and uncontested probate — the full list is published. Other matters are hourly: £280 for a partner, £180 for a solicitor, £95 for a paralegal, all plus VAT. Disbursements such as court fees and searches are additional and estimated in writing before we start.
Which page should own it
Fees page, with a published fixed-fee list
What silence costs
Most people needing legal advice never contact anyone because they cannot estimate the cost. Publishing figures unlocks demand rather than losing margin.
More questions law firms get
Related
term
What is AI customer service?
AI customer service means answering customer questions with a language model rather than a person. The useful implementations are grounded in a specific business's own content; the poor ones let a general model improvise, which produces confident answers that are wrong.
term
What is a knowledge base?
Traditionally a knowledge base is a help centre humans read. For AI support it is the source material a representative answers from — which means an ordinary website, well written, can serve as one without a separate help centre.
use case
Answer customer questions from your own content
Answering questions well means answering them from something true. RubyRep retrieves the relevant passages from your site before it writes anything, and cites the page it used, so an answer can always be checked.
Does your site answer this already?
Point RubyRep at your website and ask it this exact question. If it cannot answer, neither can your customers.