This briefing is general guidance, current at the time of writing. It is not legal advice. Verify the current requirement and the registration steps against the SRA’s own clickable-logo resource and with your firm’s COLP before you rely on it.
Of all the Transparency Rules obligations, the digital badge is the one most likely to be quietly missing from an otherwise tidy solicitor’s website. It is a small mark, usually expected in the footer, and an agency that built the site before it became mandatory, or simply did not know to add it, will have left it off. The firm carries the obligation regardless of who built the site.
This briefing sets out what the badge is, why displaying it is not optional, what it actually does when a visitor clicks it, and how a firm gets it onto its site correctly.
What the digital badge is
The SRA digital badge, referred to in the SRA’s own resources as the clickable logo, is a regulated-status mark that an SRA-authorised firm displays on its website. It is not merely a graphic. It is backed by verification software so that only firms that are currently regulated by the SRA can display a working badge. That is what distinguishes it from a firm simply pasting an SRA logo onto a page: the badge is tied to the firm’s live regulated status.
The technology behind it is provided by the SRA’s development partner, Yoshki, who administer the scheme and operate the verification that keeps the mark limited to regulated firms.
Why you must display it
Displaying the badge is a requirement, not a nicety. The SRA introduced the clickable logo alongside the Transparency Rules, and its display became a mandatory requirement on 25 November 2019. Under the rules, an authorised body must display, in a prominent place on its website, its SRA number and the SRA’s digital badge.
“Prominent” is doing real work in that sentence. A badge tucked onto a single deep page does not satisfy the spirit of the requirement the way a badge in the footer of every page does. The footer is the natural home: it is where a reviewer, and a cautious client, will look for regulatory information, and putting it there means the prominence requirement is met wherever a visitor lands.
The SRA has been clear that it monitors compliance. It does so through thematic reviews, by responding to reports of non-compliance, and by conducting web sweeps of firms’ websites. Where the badge is missing, the SRA’s stated approach is to engage with the firm first, and to consider further action in line with its enforcement strategy if a firm continues not to comply.
What it signals: what happens when a visitor clicks it
The badge earns its name from being clickable, and the click is the point. According to the SRA’s own Q&A, if a visitor to the firm’s website clicks the logo, they are taken to an SRA-hosted page which confirms that the firm, by name, is regulated, and which outlines the protections that regulated status provides.
That is a meaningfully stronger signal than a static logo. A static “SRA regulated” image proves nothing; anyone can copy one. The clickable badge resolves, via the verification software, to a page on the SRA’s own domain naming the firm. It lets a prospective client, an in-house counsel doing supplier due diligence, or a professional-indemnity insurer confirm the firm’s regulated status in a single click, from a source the firm does not control and cannot fake. For a firm competing against unregulated providers offering “legal services”, that verifiable distinction is worth surfacing rather than hiding.
How a firm gets the badge onto its site
The badge is not something a firm designs. It is issued through the scheme, and there are two practical steps.
- Register the website address in mySRA. Before the badge will work, the firm records its website address against its organisation in mySRA (under the organisation’s office details). The SRA notes that synchronisation can take at least 24 hours, so this is not an instant switch-on. The verification software checks that the badge is being shown on a site linked to a currently regulated firm.
- Embed the supplied badge code. The firm places the badge code, provided through the scheme, on its site, in a prominent place. The badge is available in different colour variations and in Welsh, so it can be matched to the site’s design without a firm resorting to an unofficial substitute.
Because the badge resolves through a third-party script, it should be embedded so that it loads without blocking the page’s main content from rendering, and the firm should confirm the badge is genuinely resolving to the SRA verification page rather than silently failing, a common state on sites where the mySRA website address was never registered or later changed.
A note on accuracy and change
Two honest caveats. First, the exact rule numbering for the badge requirement sits within the Transparency Rules, and that numbering can change when the rules are revised; the substance, that the badge must be displayed prominently, is the stable part. Second, the operational detail of registration and embedding is administered through the SRA’s scheme and its technology partner, and those steps can be updated. Treat the registration steps above as the shape of the process, and follow the SRA’s current clickable-logo resource for the exact clicks.
How a regulated-grade estate handles this
Custodiance runs a firm’s web and email estate as a managed service, and a correctly registered, correctly resolving digital badge is part of that estate rather than a task that gets forgotten after launch. The badge is placed in the footer of every page, the mySRA website registration is confirmed so the badge actually resolves, the embed is loaded without harming page performance, and the whole thing is checked periodically so that a change of domain or a lapsed registration does not silently break the mark. The SRA number sits beside it, and the regulatory footer carries the rest of the Transparency Rules information alongside.
This is the floor of a Growth engagement (£1,495/mo). A fractional-CTO Embedded engagement (from £6,000/mo, bespoke) owns the wider compliance posture across the estate.
Frequently asked questions
Is the digital badge really mandatory, or just recommended?
It is mandatory. It was voluntary when first introduced but became a mandatory requirement on 25 November 2019. An authorised body must display its SRA number and the SRA’s digital badge in a prominent place on its website.
Can we just use a static SRA logo image instead?
That misses the point of the requirement and the value of the badge. The whole purpose is that the clickable badge resolves, through verification software, to an SRA-hosted page confirming the firm by name is regulated. A static image proves nothing and does not carry that verification. The badge is issued through the scheme for exactly this reason.
Where should the badge go on the site?
The rules require it in a prominent place. The footer of every page is the practical home: it satisfies prominence wherever a visitor lands, and it sits naturally beside the SRA number and the rest of the regulatory information. A badge on one deep page only is easy for a reviewer to miss and hard to defend as prominent.
What happens if we do not display it?
The SRA monitors compliance through web sweeps, thematic reviews, and reports. Its stated approach is to engage with a firm first, and to consider further action in line with its enforcement strategy if the firm continues not to comply. It is a regulatory requirement, not an optional trust mark.
Where this fits
The badge is one element of the wider regulatory information the SRA Transparency Rules require a firm to publish. The confidentiality and data-protection duties that govern the forms and uploads on the same site are in client confidentiality and data protection for law firms, and the residency posture behind the whole estate is in the sovereign, compliant law-firm website. The cornerstone analysis of where agency-built solicitor sites fail is why your UK law firm’s website probably fails SRA confidentiality, and the rule-by-rule markup detail is in the SRA Transparency Rules website checklist. The published posture behind all of it is the Custodiance framework, and the overview for firms is Custodiance for law firms. When a firm is ready, the next step is to request a scoping call.
Sources & methodology
Facts on the badge, its mandatory date, its function when clicked, and the registration process are drawn from the SRA’s clickable-logo resource and Q&A and the SRA’s Transparency Rules. The exact rule numbering and the operational registration steps can be revised by the SRA; confirm against the live resource.
- SRA clickable logo (digital badge) resource - Solicitors Regulation Authority - https://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/resources/fees/clickable-logo/
- SRA clickable logo Q&A - Solicitors Regulation Authority - https://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/resources/fees/digital-badge-q-a
- SRA Transparency Rules (current version) - Solicitors Regulation Authority - https://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/standards-regulations/transparency-rules/
- Price transparency and digital badge confirmed (2018 news release) - Solicitors Regulation Authority - https://www.sra.org.uk/sra/news/press/2018/price-transparency-digital-badge-confirmed/
- Methodology: SRA clickable-logo resources read for the requirement, the click behaviour, and the registration process. General guidance, not legal advice. Last updated 3 July 2026.