Writing pages (2): fees pages and how-to-choose pages

This chapter's figures use the same source short forms as 5.1: "L3" = the 30 questions collected on 2026-09-29 (2–5 per practice area outside family law; ChatGPT is asked each question twice, independently — the main text gives run 1, the bracket gives run 2; AI Mode once per question); "the family set" = the 22 family-law questions from the public dataset R1/R2 (collected 2026-09-23, each question asked once). Page types are labelled heuristically by URL and title; an observation resting on just one page or one question is labelled "single case".

5.4 ② Fee guide page: the law firm's first page

What you'll do in this section: follow the blueprint and build the fee guide page — put every matter type the firm handles into one master table with a row per stage, give court fees their own column, turn the conclusion block and the first sentence of "What affects the price" into an official-basis sentence and a procedure-variable sentence, and in the section below the table write the billing method, what's charged separately, and "The final fee is set out in our letter of engagement." Why this page comes first, and what the three specs are, is in 5.1; this section only covers how to build it. When you're done, you'll have a law firm's fee guide page ready to build from: every group links to its single-matter fee page, and every court figure carries a page name and the date it was retrieved.

For the blocks the general blueprint marks law, law firms follow the six points below.

1. The master table's five columns: Stage / What we do at this stage / Our fee (incl. GST) / Court fees payable to the court / Typical elapsed time. Group by matter type, one row per stage within each group; a matter type with only one stage (a simple will, say) gets one row; the first row of each group links to its matching single-matter fee page (5.5). Every matter type the firm handles goes into the table, and each row matches the version number of a letter-of-engagement template in the sign-off sheet (Appendix B.4); a matter type the firm does not handle gets "We do not handle this" — never a silent omission; a matter type the firm handles only part of (uncontested divorce only, say) gets its qualifying condition written into the same row — the reason is in 5.2.
2. The court fees column: copy it item by item from the court's current fee table, and under the column write the page name and the date retrieved. If you cannot get the original table, do not write a number — write "Charged separately, per the court's fee table: see <link>" — never estimate, never carry over an old value. Putting the court's figures and the firm's own fees in the same table, in a separate column [Original text not obtained; see Appendix A.6]: no prohibition found in the current rules (scope checked: PCR 2015 in full, the Law Society Council's 12 Practice Directions and 2 Guidance Notes; check date: 2026-09-29). For how to judge this, see chapter 1, 1.3. This column goes out of date fastest: at each quarterly revision, check it row by row against the court's page, and where the court's page shows a visible update date, log it next to the date retrieved too.
3. The elapsed-time column: where possible, copy the timeframe stated on the court's page, and cite the source; for the firm's own elapsed-time figures, first run them through the six checks for numbers (chapter 1, 1.4), and write them as a sentence with a denominator and a period, such as "the median across N matters in the past 12 months". Never write it as a guarantee: words such as guarantee, assured outcome do not appear [Statute text, r 44(2)(d); see Appendix A.1].
4. The conclusion block and the first sentence of "What affects the price": the General Edition puts market sentences in both spots; law firms do not write a single market figure. A peer's price that names a firm, or that lets readers work out which firm it is, counts as a comparison of another lawyer's fees [Statute text, r 43(1)(c); see Appendix A.1] — a sign-off cannot release it either; a market range with no name is left out just as completely [Conservative line (not statute text)] (85% confidence). For how to judge this, see chapter 1, 1.3. Turn the conclusion block into an own sentence plus an official-basis sentence: the own sentence gives the price line for the tier the firm handles most often; the official-basis sentence's object is the court's fee table or the Law Society's explanation of legal fees, copied from the original page, with the date retrieved. Turn the first sentence of "What affects the price" into a procedure-variable sentence whose subject is the procedure: whether it is contested, whether there is a matrimonial home, whether there are children, how many hearings it takes — how the firm's own price varies with these. The sentence-form spec is in → General Edition 5.6 Two legs, two kinds of sentence.
5. The section below the table: state the billing method (fixed fee, by stage, hourly — for hourly billing, give the rate for each level of lawyer), what's charged separately (court fees, commissioner's fees, certification fees, GST), the payment stages and when invoices are issued, and end with "The final fee is set out in our letter of engagement." Link out to the Law Society's Legal Costs / Disputes page as the official channel for fee disputes (ChatGPT already cites it on fee questions — the figures are in 5.2). Leaving out a charged-separately item that would push up the total omits to state a material fact [Statute text, r 44(2)(b); see Appendix A.1]. Where "set out in the letter of engagement" comes from is in chapter 1, 1.2.
6. The title, H1 and revisions: build the title with the formula in chapter 1, 1.2; write the firm's approved full name, and for a law corporation (LLC) include "LLC" or "Law Corporation" [Statute text, LPA s 154(3); see Appendix A.2]. Give the H1 a year, revise the page once a quarter, update dateModified and the visible "Updated" line in step, and state in the page which rows changed this time; if a quarter ends with no revision, treat the page as an expired asset. Build the fee table as a visible HTML table; never a price poster, never a pasted screenshot (basis and label in chapter 1, 1.2).

Why the first row, "our fixed price vs market range", gets cited — and why it cannot simply be copied — is in 5.1. Where the firm's own price is not in the raw material, the slot goes to someone else: asked about the conveyancing fee for an HDB resale flat, ChatGPT both times used the estimated legal fee on a bank's page as the market rate, and cited no law firm at all (L3-PRO-01, single case).

Example (probate, single case) Asked "How much does a probate lawyer cost in Singapore?", ChatGPT's run 2 answer wrote out the filing fee, the Schedule of Assets fee and the certified true copy fees from the court's "How to file for a Grant of Probate" page item by item, then wrote the legal-fee portion separately, as publicly listed fixed-fee packages — the two kept apart (L3-EST-02). The master table, which splits the firm's own fees and court fees into two columns, hands over raw material with the same structure; whether the whole table gets cited has not been measured.

Build the Chinese-language version only if you have Chinese-speaking clients, and accept it only on the AI Mode leg; how to write it is in 5.3. Of the 5 Chinese pages (heuristically labelled) that AI Mode cited across L3's 4 Chinese questions, one was a Chinese-language legal-fees article written by a law firm itself (L3-EMP-03, single case).

For the general write-up (blueprint, column headers, sample sentences, most common mistake), see → General Edition 5.12 Price guide page (1): why it is always the first page (pt02), → General Edition 5.13 Price guide page (2): blueprint, column headers, sentences (pt02).

5.5 ① Single-matter fee page: one URL per type of matter

What you'll do in this section: open one page per type of matter, with a price line as the very first line on the first screen — service tier, defining conditions, price and what's included all in the same line. You can write a range or "from", but in the same sentence follow it immediately with the defining conditions and the variables that would push the total up; break "No hidden cost" into an itemised list of what's included and what's charged separately; for a type of matter with no fixed price, write one qualifying sentence that carries the billing method. When you're done, you'll have a single-matter fee page template you can copy for a different matter just by changing the name — it fits divorce, probate, conveyancing, criminal plea in mitigation and contract review alike.

Five things the figure cannot show:

1. The format of a price line: one tier per line, <service> (<conditions>): S$<price> Nett (<GST, disbursements and court fees: included or not>); use Service and conditions / Our fee (incl. GST) / Included / Charged separately as the price-table column headers. A single-matter fee page can simply be the service page for that type of matter, as long as the first line on the first screen is a price line — the law-firm pages ChatGPT cites on fee questions are mostly practice area pages that carry a price (figures in 5.1). Writing a range or "from" [Original text not obtained; see Appendix A.6]: no prohibition found in the current rules (scope checked: PCR 2015 in full, the Law Society Council's 12 Practice Directions and 2 Guidance Notes, the revoked Publicity Rules; check date: 2026-09-29), 75% confidence, and to the client we say only "we found no rule that prohibits it". Applied to this page: only use "from" where the price within the same tier genuinely rises with some variable, and write that variable into the same sentence rather than a separate paragraph; delete "the cheapest" or "lower than most firms" whole [Statute text, r 43(1)(c); see Appendix A.1].
2. What's included travels with the price: write it in the same sentence, never in a footnote, never in the FAQ.

Example (probate, single case) Asked "How much does a probate lawyer cost in Singapore?", ChatGPT's run 2 answer listed three tiers of publicly listed fixed-fee packages, each written together with its own what's-included wording: "S$1,150 nett including court filing/commissioner fees", "S$1,500 before GST and excluding court fees", "S$2,500 all-in". Both runs devoted a paragraph telling the reader to ask whether a quote includes court fees, commissioner's fees and GST (L3-EST-02). If the page already lists what's included and charged separately item by item, you have already answered that checklist for the reader.

1. The type of matter with no fixed price (contested divorce, litigation, hourly-billed advisory work): write a qualifying sentence that stands on its own, with the billing method in the same sentence. Sample (not measured): "<Service> has no fixed fee at <approved firm name>: we charge S$<X> per hour (incl. GST) for <lawyer level> and give you a written estimate before we start." A qualifying sentence gets copied whole too: the opening line of one firm's maintenance guide, "no fixed formula", was picked up by AI Mode almost verbatim as the start of its answer (family law, single case). For hourly billing, give the rate for every level of lawyer: asked "How much does it cost to hire a lawyer in Singapore?", ChatGPT took its tiered hourly rates from one firm's terms-of-engagement page (L3-GEN-01 run 1, single case).
2. The first consultation gets its own row: in the same question, the first row of the fee table ChatGPT pieced together was the first consultation, in both runs (L3-GEN-01, single case). If it's charged, write the price and the length; if it's free, write the scope and the length, such as "First 30 minutes free of charge; document review not included" [Original text not obtained; see Appendix A.6]: no prohibition found in the current rules (scope checked: PCR 2015 in full, the Law Society Council's 12 Practice Directions and 2 Guidance Notes; check date: 2026-09-29), 60% confidence; leaving out the scope omits to state a material fact (r 44(2)(b)) [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]. These are the firm's own terms of service, written only on the firm's own pages; our own materials never use wording like free legal consultation (see chapter 1, 1.1).
3. Worked fee examples on family-law pages: write them as an "illustrative scenario" — a matrimonial home, two children, terms already agreed — built up from the defining conditions, never borrowed from a real client's case. To use a real case, treat it as a family-law case study: our side first runs the de-identification check (Appendix B.4), and only after it passes does the item go to a partner or director for a written, item-by-item sign-off. Two rules are the words of the legislation itself, and no sign-off can release them: anything that could identify a child involved in the proceedings is never published (CYPA s 112); anything from family proceedings that a Family Justice Court has restricted from publication is never published (FJA s 10) [Statute text; see Appendix A.4]. A lawyer's signature does not cover our own criminal liability as the publisher either (see chapter 1, 1.7). A written sign-off resolves only the stop-and-escalate situations; it never turns something banned as Statute text into something publishable.

Family-law pages never write "no win no fee", and no page anywhere writes fees as a percentage of damages; for how to judge this, see the figure in chapter 1, 1.2. This is exactly what buyers hear back in the answer: asked in Chinese, "劳资纠纷请律师要多少钱" (how much does a lawyer cost for an employment dispute), ChatGPT, citing the Law Society's fees page, said that contentious matters generally cannot be charged on a "赢了才收费/抽成" (pay only if you win / take a cut) basis (L3-EMP-03 run 1, single case).

For the general write-up (structure, sample sentences, most common mistake), see → General Edition 5.11 Single-service price page (pt01).

5.6 ⑰ Legal aid and pro bono, ㉗ amount limits, ㊳ fee estimator

What you'll do in this section: copy legal aid eligibility word for word from the Legal Aid Bureau's own text and write the check date, with no touting sentence for the firm tacked onto the page; write each amount limit as one figure, tiered by effective date; write "can I bring a lawyer?" in the court's own words; the estimator only estimates the firm's own legal fees by stage — never damages, never an outcome — and build no maintenance calculator either. When you're done, you'll have a minimum viable version of each of the three page types, plus a list stating what you don't do.

On all three question types, ChatGPT cites almost nothing but official sources: across L3's two legal-aid questions, 14/15 of ChatGPT's citations (15/17) went to government and public-body pages and 0 to law firms; on the small-claims limit question, both runs gave 3/3 citations to the court's pages (L3-DEB-02, single case). A law firm cannot take the official page's place, so the law-firm version only does downstream work: copy it, write the check date, link back to the original page, then add one sentence the official page will not — how this step runs at the firm, and what it costs.

Legal aid and pro bono rules page (pt17)

1. Copy the eligibility conditions (the means test, which cases are handled, which are not) word for word from the Legal Aid Bureau's page, and write the check date. Skip the block the general blueprint calls "your own three-column table": the firm's own fees never appear on this page; the firm's fees get only a link, pointing to the fee guide page or a single-matter fee page [Conservative line (not statute text)].
2. Never write anything like "can't afford a lawyer? come to us" on the page. The basis is PCR r 39(1): "A legal practitioner or law practice must not tout for business or do anything which is likely to lead to a reasonable inference that the thing was done for the purpose of touting." [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]; applied to the legal-aid page [Conservative line (not statute text)]. The fact that the firm takes part in pro bono work goes on the pro bono and legal aid page (㉟, see 5.20).

Amounts and limits page (pt27)

1. One figure, tiered by effective date: for figures such as the Small Claims Tribunals (SCT) and Employment Claims Tribunals (ECT) claim limits and filing fees, copy them from the court's page and write the page name and the date retrieved; where a figure has changed, write the old value, the new value and the effective date side by side. Never estimate, never carry over an old value.
2. Write "can I bring a lawyer?" in the court's own words. Where the court says a lawyer cannot appear for a party, write that a lawyer cannot, then write what the firm can do instead (pre-hearing advice, preparing documents) and what that part costs. When ChatGPT answered the small-claims question, right after the lines on the claim limit came "lawyers are not allowed to represent parties at SCT consultations or hearings", sourced from the court's page (L3-DEB-02 run 1, single case). Writing "we will appear for you" would be misleading: publicity containing a material misrepresentation is misleading under r 44(2)(a) [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]; placing this sentence under (a) is an application [Conservative line (not statute text)].

Fee estimator (pt38)

1. Estimate only the firm's own legal fees: the inputs are the stage and the circumstances (contested or not, a matrimonial home or not, how many hearings), and the output is the firm's fee for each stage, with "set out in the letter of engagement" written next to it. Flatten each stage's fee into a static table so it still shows with JS turned off; the estimator component itself is not the part that gets copied.
2. Build no damages estimator: creating an unjustified expectation about the results is misleading [Statute text, r 44(2)(d); see Appendix A.1], applied to an estimator [Conservative line (not statute text)]. The official side already owns this slot: asked "How much compensation can I get for a car accident injury in Singapore?", all 6 of ChatGPT's run-1 citations came from government sources, court judgments and MACO, the motor-accident claims simulator run by a statutory body — 0 from law firms; the injury-compensation ranges in the answer followed the court's compensation guidelines (L3-INJ-01, single case).
3. Build no maintenance calculator: on both of the family set's maintenance questions, ChatGPT volunteered that there is no fixed formula or official calculator (family R1-LAW-06, R2-LAW-04, 2/2); a figure a calculator produces is one readers will treat as what the court is going to award [Conservative line (not statute text)]. The rule the courts use to set maintenance was not obtained this round [Original text not obtained], so the page does not write a sentence like "the law states there is no formula" either.
4. Never put guarantee, we will win or "包赢" (sure win) next to an estimate [Statute text, r 44(2)(d); see Appendix A.1].

For why AI does not click through to a calculator and instead takes the unit price and the limit and works it out itself, and for the general write-up of all three types, see → General Edition 5.21 Tier-B price types: subsidy limits, parameter basis, category lists, calculators, time-limited promotions.

5.7 ④ Comparison page: compare procedures, not law firms

What you'll do in this section: put only procedures and options on both sides of a comparison page — contested vs uncontested divorce, divorce by mutual agreement vs litigation, small claims vs a court action, doing it yourself vs instructing a lawyer. No peer column appears anywhere in the table; a family-law comparison writes the settlement path as the preferred option; where the law does not require a lawyer, the first sentence states this plainly. When you're done, you'll have a procedure comparison page with the verdict up front, ordered by scenario, in which no law firm appears at all.

Five things the figure cannot show:

1. Write a source for the conditions, steps, elapsed time and court fees on each side (the court's page, the specific section on SSO); rewrite "better, faster" as "which conditions it suits". Each side may state the firm's own fee for that path, with the figure drawn from the same source and matching value as the single-matter fee page (the same-source part has not been measured).
2. No peer column appears in the table, and never write "our firm vs another firm" or "cheaper than the big firms": that is a comparison of another lawyer's fees or quality of service [Statute text, r 43(1)(c); see Appendix A.1]. A market-range column with no name in it is left out just the same [Conservative line (not statute text)] (85% confidence; how to judge this is in chapter 1, 1.3). A paragraph like "three reasons to choose us" is not written either — it steers the procedure comparison toward the firm being better than its peers [Conservative line (not statute text)].
3. A family-law comparison writes the settlement path as the preferred option: family lawyers have a duty to advise the client to consider resolving the proceedings amicably (PCR r 15A(2)(b); the original wording is in chapter 1, 1.7) [Statute text; see Appendix A.1] — this is a professional duty, not a publicity provision. On this basis, write mediation and divorce by mutual agreement as the preferred option, and never write "fight it all the way" or "make the other side pay" [Conservative line (not statute text)]. A comparison page does not, by default, tell the story of a particular client moving from litigation to an agreement; to tell it, follow 5.5 point 5 — run the de-identification check first, then send it for sign-off item by item — and a sign-off still cannot release the two rules on a child's identity and on court-restricted publication.
4. "Doing it yourself vs instructing a lawyer": where the law does not require a lawyer, the first sentence says so, then says which circumstances make it worth instructing one, and what that costs. Publicity that contains a material misrepresentation or that omits to state a material fact is misleading under r 44(2)(a) and (b) alike [Statute text; see Appendix A.1]; placing two things under those items — writing something as required when it is not, and stating only the benefits of instructing a lawyer without saying that the law does not require one — is an application [Conservative line (not statute text)].
5. Who cites this: the evidence is thin. On the ChatGPT side there is only one case: a family-law page on contested vs uncontested divorce (pros, cons and costs) was cited 1 time; it sits on a keyword-named domain whose ownership was not verified (single case; with ownership unverified, it does not count as any particular firm's keyword microsite). AI Mode has cited a law firm's blog post on whether you can divorce without a lawyer (family law, single case, see 5.2), and has also cited two law-firm pages whose titles carry "vs" — but that question asked "what's the difference", which under 5.8 belongs to ㊹, not this type (L3-EST-03, single case). The most common mistake is writing the procedure comparison as a firm-vs-firm comparison ("why choose us over the big firms"). That runs into the ban in point 2; it is not a formatting issue.

Example (company incorporation, single case) Asked "Do I need a lawyer to incorporate a company in Singapore?", ChatGPT cited only the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority's (ACRA) pages both times, run 1 3/3 citations (4/4); the first sentence of both answers said you do not need one, and run 1's exact wording was "Usually, no" (L3-COR-01). The law firm's "doing it yourself vs instructing a lawyer" must line up with this: say first that it isn't necessary, then say which circumstances make instructing a lawyer worthwhile.

For the general write-up, see → General Edition 5.15 Comparison page (pt04).

5.8 ㊸ How to choose a lawyer and ㊹ concept pillar page

What you'll do in this section: take the traffic you cannot win on "which law firm is best" and turn it into a criteria guide on "how to choose a lawyer" — list the criteria, rank no one, name no one; the criteria are official steps the reader can check for themselves. A concept pillar page explains just one concept gap clearly, such as probate versus letters of administration. When you're done, you'll have a minimum viable version of each of these two types, plus one boundary you never cross.

Neither blueprint has been measured at all: pt43's spec is drawn from an external teardown, and pt44 has 0 cited samples in the General Edition. ㊸ is the stand-in for the ⑤ List page, which law firms do not build; the full table of stand-ins is in chapter 0, 0.3.

㊸ How to choose a lawyer

1. Delete both blocks the blueprint marks law (a side-by-side rating table, per-firm cards) in full: scoring peers side by side is a comparison of other firms' quality of service [Statute text, r 43(1)(c); see Appendix A.1]. Keep only three blocks in the body: the evaluation criteria, "a free first consultation doesn't prove much", and "questions to ask before instructing a lawyer"; the firm's own name appears following the naming rule in 5.2, and at most 2 FAQ items name the firm [Conservative line (not statute text)].
2. Use the five steps in the figure as the evaluation criteria. When ChatGPT itself listed the questions to ask before instructing a lawyer, the first item was checking practising status on the LSRA register (L3-GEN-02 run 1, single case). The SAL directory step states the current position plainly: no one holds Family Law specialist accreditation yet — as of 2026-09-29 the directory holds 121 entries, 0 in family law, with the first results due to be announced at the Opening of the Legal Year 2027 [Statute text; see Appendix A.5]. Never put success rate or win rate into the criteria: a lawyer's publicity is already barred from stating either figure (r 43(1)(b)(ii)) [Statute text; see Appendix A.1].
3. On this kind of question, ChatGPT does not cite law-firm criteria guides: asked "How do I find a good lawyer in Singapore?", ChatGPT cited only the Ministry of Law (including the LSRA register lookup and the Legal Aid Bureau), the Law Society and pro bono organisations, in both runs (L3-GEN-05, single case); asked "What questions should I ask a lawyer before hiring them in Singapore?", ChatGPT gave government and public-body pages 4/4 citations (5/5), and AI Mode gave only 1 citation — a law firm's article on 6 things to ask a family lawyer before hiring one (L3-GEN-02, single case). So ㊸ serves only AI Mode and on-site landing; it is not measured, 65% confidence — schedule one article first as a control.
4. ㊸ cannot reach the "who's best" slot: on recommendation-type questions, what ChatGPT copies is a ranking guide's tier (figures in chapter 1, 1.6); that slot runs through third-party assessments and directories instead — see chapters 3 and 6. Never promise a client a place in any ranking guide, or a citation in any particular answer.
5. The boundary: no client reviews or testimonials cited (for family law, reviews are covered in chapter 1, 1.5 and 1.7); no steering toward an outcome; byline a named lawyer plus the update date; never suggest in the text that the firm is better than its peers.

㊹ Concept pillar page

1. Explain one concept gap clearly: probate (grant of probate) versus letters of administration, simplified versus normal procedure, custody versus care and control. Compare only the concepts, never the firms; write the fees section as the firm's own price line, following 5.5; link the legislation to its section on SSO (a URL with ProvIds); write the byline following 5.2 — a named lawyer, year of admission and the update date.
2. The evidence points a direction only: asked "What is the difference between a grant of probate and letters of administration in Singapore?", ChatGPT cited only the court's pages, the legislation and the Syariah Court's page in both runs, run 1 3/3 citations (3/3); of AI Mode's 5 citations, 3 were law-firm pages, 2 of them titled "Grant of Probate vs Letters of Administration" (L3-EST-03, single case, page type heuristic). These 3 pages were not taken apart page by page, so whether they count as a pillar long-form article in the blueprint's sense is not known — pt44 therefore still stands as unmeasured in the Law Firms Edition.
3. The title's wording decides whether a page belongs to ④ or to this type: "which is better" belongs to ④; "what's the difference" belongs to this type, or to ⑫ the Definition page if it explains only one concept. How to judge it is in the figure at the link below; fix which side the title falls on before you write, and each keyword may be taken by one page only.
4. Family-law concept pages (custody versus care and control, and the like) write only the legal points and the procedure, never hearing details that could be matched to a specific party (see chapter 1, 1.7).

For how to write each block and how to judge titles, see → General Edition 5.30 The four tier-C types: unverified page types.