Should a Professional Practice Display Its Fees?
Should a practice display fees? The question arrives every time somebody reads your services page, understands what you do, and finds nothing about cost.
Most of them will not call to ask. They will check somebody else, and you will never know they were there.
So should a practice display fees? For an ordinary business this is a marketing judgement. For a regulated Kenyan practice it is partly a compliance question, and that changes the answer in ways most pricing advice never addresses.
Why This Is Not an Ordinary Pricing Decision
For a coach, whether to publish rates is a question about anchoring and negotiating room.
A regulated practice faces a different set of constraints. What you may say about fees is governed, competing on price may be restricted, and in clinical settings the line between informing a patient and inducing one carries real weight.
Understanding those constraints usually makes the decision easier rather than harder, because they narrow the options to a few defensible positions.
Advocates and the Remuneration Order
For advocates, should a practice display fees runs straight into the Advocates Remuneration Order, which prescribes scales for much of the work they do.
Alongside it, the Advocates Practice Rules prohibit an advocate from holding themselves out, directly or indirectly, as prepared to do professional business at less than those scales.
That single rule settles a great deal. An advocate cannot advertise on being cheaper, cannot run discount messaging, and cannot frame fees as a competitive advantage.
What remains is still useful. You may explain how you charge, whether by the hour, by matter, or according to the Order. You may publish consultation fees where they are fixed. Furthermore, you may explain what drives variation in a matter, which is often the information a client actually wants.
Clinics and the Line Between Information and Inducement
In healthcare, should a practice display fees carries a different tension entirely.
Fee information helps patients plan, and patients genuinely need it. However, promotional pricing in healthcare edges toward inducement, encouraging somebody to seek a clinical service for a financial reason rather than a medical one. Kenyan health regulators treat that distinction seriously, and digital channels are receiving increasing attention.
The practical line runs roughly here. Publishing a consultation fee is information. Advertising a discounted procedure with a deadline attached is closer to inducement.
Our guide to clinic websites in Kenya covers the KMPDC advertising rules in more detail.
Should a Practice Display Fees? Four Levels of Disclosure
Should a practice display fees is rarely a yes or no question. Four positions exist, and most practices can adopt at least the second.
Level one, complete silence. Rarely justified, and it costs enquiries.
Level two, how you charge. No figures. You explain the basis, whether hourly, per matter, per procedure, or by scale. This is available to almost every practice and answers more than people expect.
Level three, fixed elements published. Consultation fees, standard reviews, routine procedures, or anything genuinely fixed. Combined with an explanation of what varies.
Level four, full published schedule. Appropriate where services are standardised and permitted, common in dentistry, diagnostics, and some routine legal work.
Moving from level one to level two costs you nothing and requires no figures at all.
What to Write When You Cannot Give a Number
Where the honest answer to should a practice display fees is not yet, something must still fill the space. Silence is the only genuinely unhelpful option.
Describe the basis of charging. State whether an initial consultation carries a fee and what it is. Explain what makes a matter more or less expensive, whether that is complexity, court appearances, duration, or investigations required. Note which cover or payment arrangements you accept.
A client who reads that understands their position without a single figure being quoted. That is the whole objective.
Where Fee Information Belongs
Having decided that a practice should display fees in some form, place them carefully. Not buried on a separate page nobody reaches.
Put the basis of charging on each service or practice area page, near the description of the work. Somebody reading about a specific matter is thinking about cost at that moment rather than three clicks later.
Repeat consultation fees on your contact or booking page, since that is where the commitment happens. Our post on appointment booking for practices covers the booking flow.
Fee Language a Practice Must Never Publish
Language suggesting you work below scale, where a scale governs your profession.
Discount urgency. Offers expiring on Friday belong to retail.
Comparative pricing claims, which breach dignity requirements and denigrate by implication.
Free consultation framing that induces, particularly in clinical contexts.
Figures you cannot honour, since a quoted price you later exceed creates a different problem entirely.
Outdated schedules. A fee page showing last year’s figures damages trust more than no page at all.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should a practice display fees if competitors do not? Being the only practice that answers the question is usually an advantage, provided you stay within your professional rules.
Should a practice display fees if it is a law firm? You may explain how you charge and publish fixed consultation fees. You may not hold yourself out as working below the Remuneration Order scales. Confirm the current position with the Law Society.
Can clinics advertise discounted procedures? Approach with real caution, since promotional clinical pricing edges toward inducement. Take advice before running any such offer.
Does publishing fees attract price shoppers? It attracts fewer unqualified enquiries, which is different. People who cannot afford you self select out before consuming your time.
How often should fee information be reviewed? At least annually, and immediately after any change.
Who should approve fee content? A practitioner or partner, since the wording carries professional implications.
Say Something, Even Without a Figure
Should a practice display fees comes down to what your rules permit rather than what your competitors do. Almost every Kenyan practice can at minimum explain how it charges, and doing so converts far better than silence.
At Africa Web Experts we build fee sections for Kenyan practices that inform clients while staying inside professional constraints. From KES 65,000, live in seventy two hours, on your own domain.
