Back in January, the SRA published a breezy annual report about its pet project Legal Choices, a consumer service providing information on legal issues and the lawyers who can sort them.
The report gave plenty of facts about the number of people who visited the site in the last year (1.3 million) and the viewer count for videos promoted on Facebook, YouTube and Google (1.7 million).
Impressive numbers, no doubt, but one piece of information was still missing: how much the profession is paying for this service.
Luckily, Obiter is on hand to correct this unfortunate omission. We put in a freedom of information request with the SRA to find out.
The regulator confirmed this week that it spends £159,500 each year on Legal Choices, which handily comes to about £1 for every practising solicitor.
Despite being one of seven organisations involved, the SRA is clearly the driver of the operation, contributing 64% of the total
budget. The burden was no doubt increased when the Bar Standards Board cut its funding commitments in 2019.
Ideally, we wouldn’t have to make an FoI to find out fundamental details about the Legal Choices website. Given its commitment to making key information available, would it be too much to ask that the next annual report includes the cost of the thing?
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