Does the SRA call a firm “authorised and regulated” in an agreement that fines it?

In one published case, yes. Paragraph 1.1 of the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s settlement agreement for SRA 816283, as fetched on October 30, 2026, describes the firm as “a recognised body, authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).” Sub-paragraph 1.1(a) says the firm “will pay a financial penalty in the sum of £23,549.” The agreement’s published date is June 25, 2025. The agreement also states “There has been no evidence of harm to consumers or third parties and there is now a low risk of repetition.”

How long does the SRA keep published decisions on its website?

According to the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s policy page, as fetched on October 30, 2026, “Most published decisions are removed from our website three years from the date they were published.” The settlement agreement for SRA 816283 was published on June 25, 2025, and the SRA’s page for SRA 816283 still carried it when fetched on October 30, 2026, 16 months later.

Did any of the 30 AI answers mention a fine?

As of October 30, 2026, none of the 30 saved answers from ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude collected by Agentics contains the words fine, fined, fines, penalty, penalties, settlement, disciplinary, sanction, sanctions, sanctioned, intervention, rebuke or rebuked, or the words decision, agreement, laundering or AML. In the same 30 answers, SRA 816283 was the first firm named in 20 (ChatGPT 10, Gemini 8, Claude 2). The scope is the saved text of the answers; map cards and images were not viewed.

SRA 816283: Fined £23,549,
First in 20 of Our 30 AI Answers

Q: What did the SRA’s agreement for SRA 816283 record, and does it report harm?

The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s settlement agreement for SRA 816283, as fetched on October 30, 2026, records that between March 29, 2021 and August 9, 2024 the firm failed to conduct client and matter risk assessments required by the money laundering regulations, and that the SRA was satisfied the firm has been compliant with the client and matter risk assessment requirements since August 2024. The agreement states “There has been no evidence of harm to consumers or third parties and there is now a low risk of repetition.” Paragraph 5.7 also says that “the files were deemed compliant, in terms of customer due diligence and source of funds checks, and therefore the firm’s breaches have not caused any harm and have been remedied since our review.”

Q: Does the SRA register entry for SRA 816283 contain the published agreement?

As fetched on October 30, 2026, the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s register entry for SRA 816283 labels the firm “SRA-regulated firm” and contains a section headed “This firm’s regulatory record” that holds the published agreement, the £23,549 penalty included, on the same page. The agreement states “There has been no evidence of harm to consumers or third parties and there is now a low risk of repetition.” The entry’s header block carries a “Show regulatory record” link to that section. Whether a browser shows the section open when the page loads was not established. The SRA’s policy page says that to check whether a law firm is regulated, “you can search our Solicitor Register or contact us.”

On October 30, 2026, SRA 816283 was the first firm named in 20 of our 30 saved answers from ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude (ChatGPT 10, Gemini 8, Claude 2). As of October 30, 2026, none of those 30 saved answers mentioned a fine. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) published the firm’s settlement agreement on June 25, 2025: a £23,549 financial penalty, and “no evidence of harm to consumers or third parties.”

By William Douglas Baker

Founding Editor

Ten times each on October 30, 2026, we asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude “Best conveyancing solicitors in Doncaster.” Of the 30 saved answers, SRA 816283 came first in 20, and none of the 30 mentioned a fine. This page does not say the firm concealed anything. We do not know why the assistants answered as they did.

Regulated and fined in one paragraph

SRA 816283 is the number the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) prints on its register entry for one firm, and the only name this page gives it. The SRA’s published settlement agreement with that firm says, in paragraph 1.1, that the firm is “a recognised body, authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).” Sub-paragraph 1.1(a), in the same numbered paragraph, says the firm “will pay a financial penalty in the sum of £23,549.” Paragraph 2.3 records that between March 29, 2021 and August 9, 2024 the firm failed to conduct client and matter risk assessments required by the money laundering regulations. Paragraph 2.7 records that the SRA was satisfied the firm has been compliant with the client and matter risk assessment requirements since August 2024.

Paragraph 4.3 states that “There has been no evidence of harm to consumers or third parties and there is now a low risk of repetition.” The register carries the agreement too. Its entry for SRA 816283, as fetched on October 30, 2026, labels the firm “SRA-regulated firm.” The same page contains a section headed “This firm’s regulatory record,” which holds the published agreement, the £23,549 penalty included. Whether a browser shows that section open on load, or whether any assistant reached the entry, we did not establish.

Thirty answers, one prompt

We used one prompt, with no follow-ups, in a fresh temporary or incognito chat for each run, on one day, and saved the text of each answer. ChatGPT’s run is the least clean of the three: on one load the capture recorded a “Personalized” label and a banner saying the chat can reference memory, plugins and custom instructions. The modes shown were Instant for ChatGPT and Flash for Gemini. Claude is one of the three assistants we measured. Agentics uses Claude, made by Anthropic, in producing this publication. We ran Claude Sonnet 5.5 at its Medium setting, in incognito chats.

SRA 816283 was the first firm named in all ten ChatGPT answers, eight of ten Gemini answers and two of ten Claude answers. SRA 449176 came first in six of Claude’s answers. That firm is also one the SRA fined: its agreement, published on September 26, 2025, records a financial penalty of £29,647 and states “There is no evidence of harm to consumers, or third parties, and our view is that the risk of repetition is low.” The same agreement records, as mitigation, that the firm took steps to rectify its failures and has since put in place a compliant client and matter risk assessment process. Counting SRA 449176, a firm with a published SRA fine was first in 26 of the 30 answers.

As of October 30, 2026, none of the 30 saved answers contains fine, fined, penalty, settlement, disciplinary, sanction, intervention or rebuke, or decision, agreement, laundering or AML. For Claude, all ten told the user to check the firm’s regulation and named the SRA, eight of them alongside the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, and three pointed to a register. One of ChatGPT’s ten said to “confirm its current SRA status.” None of Gemini’s ten mentions the SRA; all ten name the Law Society Conveyancing Quality Scheme.

The SRA’s policy page says: “To check whether a law firm or an individual is regulated by us, you can search our Solicitor Register or contact us.” It labels its consumer section “Check a solicitor’s record.” In two of Claude’s answers, one point of advice begins “Check regulation.” On our reading, Claude’s ten answers carried the advice to check the regulator, three of them pointed to a register, and none mentioned a fine, while the SRA’s register entry for SRA 816283 carries the published agreement on the same page as its “SRA-regulated firm” label.

A record with a clock

The same policy page says: “Most published decisions are removed from our website three years from the date they were published.” The agreement for SRA 816283 was published on June 25, 2025, and the SRA’s page for it still carried the agreement when we fetched it on October 30, 2026, 16 months later, inside the three years the policy names.

What the charity reported

Blind Justice UK, a registered charity, ran a test of its own, which its report does not describe as peer reviewed. The report names Edward Romain, the charity’s founder and CEO, as lead researcher. The charity says that on September 27, 2026 ChatGPT and Claude (Opus 5.5, not the Claude we ran) put SRA 816283 first in all twenty of their answers, and Gemini put it second in all ten, behind SRA 642946. The charity says that in all thirty of its answers the firm at the top of the list had been fined by the SRA, and that not one answer mentioned either fine.

For SRA 642946, the charity says the fine it cites dates from 2020, rests on an archived copy of the SRA’s page, and that page returned “Page not found” on September 25 and 27, 2026; it returned “Page not found” when we fetched it on October 30, 2026. The charity says that when it asked ChatGPT directly whether a firm had been fined or disciplined by the SRA, ChatGPT found the fine, with the amount and the date, in every check it ran. Its report adds that AI answers change between runs and accounts, and that a separate tester’s run on September 25th placed SRA 816283 lower in two assistants’ answers and not at all in the third.

Our counts match the charity’s reported counts for ChatGPT only. In our saved answers, SRA 816283 came first, with no fine mentioned, in 10 of ChatGPT’s 10, 8 of Gemini’s 10 and 2 of Claude’s 10. Separately from the charity, we read the first page of ReviewSolicitors’ Doncaster residential conveyancing ranking, which says it ranks 24 law firms “by verified client reviews” and was updated on October 29, 2026. It lists SRA 816283 third, with the label “Featured.” The footer says ReviewSolicitors “holds listings for all law firms in England and Wales which include basic data supplied by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.” As of October 30, 2026, that page does not contain fined, penalty, settlement, disciplinary, sanction, regulatory or intervention.

The SRA’s register entry for SRA 816283 labels the firm “SRA-regulated firm.” The same page holds the agreement: a £23,549 penalty, and “no evidence of harm.”

The Agentics read

On our reading, this is Digital Derangement Syndrome™ (DDS™) in reverse. DDS™ is a recognition failure, and one of its five clinical characteristics, signal fragmentation, is when authority signals exist but are disconnected or insufficiently reinforced. Here 20 of the 30 saved answers named the firm first, and the signal they lacked is a record that the regulator’s own page carries and that, as of October 30, 2026, none of the 30 saved answers mentioned.

Anatomy of a status.

A status is a label. The SRA’s register entry labels the firm “SRA-regulated firm,” and paragraph 1.1 of the agreement calls it authorised and regulated.

A record is a section. The same entry holds the agreement under “This firm’s regulatory record,” with a “Show regulatory record” link in its header block.

A check asks for the status. All ten of Claude’s answers told the user to check that the firm is regulated. As of October 30, 2026, none of the 30 saved answers mentioned a fine. The open question for a practitioner is what sits beside the status a client checks.

Where the record stops

We requested no reply from the SRA, ReviewSolicitors or the firms before publication, and hold none as of October 30, 2026. Our count is one prompt, on one day, October 30, 2026, and saved text only. We asked no follow-up question. Our count shows nothing about what any assistant says when asked about a fine directly. We did not test why any assistant answered as it did, and nothing here ties an answer to ReviewSolicitors, the SRA’s register or the three-year rule.

We did not view the Google Maps cards in two Claude answers or any other images, and of ReviewSolicitors’ Doncaster ranking we read the first page only. We did not repeat the charity’s direct questions to ChatGPT. In the four answers outside the 26 counted above, a different firm came first, and this page makes no finding about those firms’ SRA records.

Everything attributed to Blind Justice UK is that charity’s account, from one report. The mapping to DDS™ is an editorial reading, not a finding about the SRA, ReviewSolicitors, any firm or any assistant.

Sources

The record. Solicitors Regulation Authority: settlement agreement for SRA 816283, published June 25, 2025; register entry for SRA 816283; policy page, “Our approach to publication” (“Updated 25 November 2019”); all as fetched October 30, 2026. ReviewSolicitors, Doncaster residential conveyancing ranking, updated October 29, 2026, as fetched October 30, 2026. Blind Justice UK, “AI’s Blind Spot”, September 2026. Agentics house capture of 30 saved answers from ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, October 30, 2026 (not linked)

SRA 816283: Fined £23,549, First in 20 of Our 30 AI Answers