How to choose a litigation lawyer in Toronto.

If you search for a litigation lawyer in Toronto, most of the first page will describe the firm behind it as the best, the top-rated, the premier or the leading choice. Those words are chosen because they match what people type into a search box, and they survive because very few readers stop to ask what would have to be true for them to be accurate.

In Ontario there is a further reason to discount them. The Law Society's marketing rule requires that what a lawyer says about their services be demonstrably true, accurate and verifiable, and the commentary specifically identifies superlatives of the "best" and "number one" variety as contravening the rule, on the footing that a claim of superiority of that kind cannot be objectively established. A firm advertising itself that way is either unaware of the rule or comfortable ignoring it, and neither is a promising start to a professional relationship.

The same rule governs a second category worth recognizing. A lawyer may not hold themselves out as a specialist or an expert in a field unless the Law Society has certified them in it, so those words used loosely in marketing copy are doing the same work as "best" while sounding more technical. References to awards and rankings are permitted where the process behind them is genuine, and are a problem where the ranking is bought, is essentially a directory listing, or is presented without enough context for a reader to understand what it measured.

None of this means a firm that markets badly is a bad firm, and plenty of capable lawyers have websites written by somebody else. It means the marketing is not evidence, and that the useful information sits elsewhere.

Start with the Law Society of Ontario's public directory, which takes a minute and is the one step almost nobody takes. It will confirm that the person is licensed, in which year they were called to the bar, whether their licence is in good standing or subject to any restriction, and whether there is a public discipline history. If a lawyer's status is anything other than straightforward, you want to know before you send them money rather than after.

The Law Society also runs a Certified Specialist program, which certifies lawyers in defined areas including civil litigation on the basis of demonstrated experience and peer review. It is the only designation in Ontario that entitles a lawyer to describe themselves as a specialist, and it is genuinely meaningful where it exists.

It also needs to be read in proportion. Only a small fraction of Ontario lawyers hold the designation, and a great many highly capable litigators have never applied for it, because certification is voluntary and the application takes time that a busy practice does not obviously reward. Its presence tells you something real; its absence tells you almost nothing.

Year of call is worth noting for a similar reason, which is that it is a fact rather than an impression. A lawyer called in 2007 has been practising for roughly nineteen years. Whether those years were spent on the kind of matter you have is a separate question and one you should ask directly.

Canadian court decisions are published free of charge on CanLII, and they are searchable by counsel name. For a litigator this is the closest thing available to a public work sample, and it costs nothing to look.

What you learn from it is more textured than a claimed track record. You can see the kinds of matters the lawyer has argued, the level of court they have appeared in, whether they have handled motions of the type your case will require, and how judges have described the arguments put to them. Reading two or three decisions in which a lawyer appeared will tell you more about how they work than any amount of website copy.

The limits of the exercise matter as much as its value. The overwhelming majority of civil files settle and never produce a reported decision, so a lawyer with a modest reported record may have resolved a great many matters well. Reported cases also skew toward the ones that were fought hardest rather than the ones that were handled best, and losing an appeal on a difficult point is not evidence of poor work. Use it to understand the shape of a practice rather than to keep score.

Where a firm publishes commentary on the law, that is worth a look for the same reason. Writing about an area with any precision is difficult to fake, and a page of substantive analysis reveals more than a page of adjectives.

In many firms the lawyer who takes the first meeting is not the lawyer who will do the work. That arrangement is entirely legitimate and often sensible, since routine steps handled by a junior at a lower rate cost the client less than the same steps handled by a partner. The problem arises when nobody tells the client, and the client believes they have retained the person they met.

Ask the question directly. Who will draft the pleadings, who will attend the motions, who will conduct the examinations, and who do I call when something goes wrong. Ask what happens if that person leaves. A firm that answers precisely is telling you something useful about how it is organised, and one that answers in generalities is also telling you something.

Firm size is a genuine trade rather than a ranking. A large firm brings depth, cover when someone is unavailable, and the capacity to absorb a document-heavy case. A small firm generally means the person you spoke to is the person doing the work, with less delegation and less overhead in the rate. Neither is better in the abstract, and the right answer depends on the size and shape of the matter.

The related question is capacity. A litigator who is about to start a six-week trial has a genuinely limited ability to take on something urgent, and a straightforward answer to whether they have room for your matter is worth more than an enthusiastic one.

Most civil litigation in Ontario is billed by the hour, sometimes with flat fees for defined steps such as a court attendance, and sometimes on a blended arrangement. The hourly rate on its own tells you very little, since a higher rate applied to fewer hours by someone who has done the work before can cost less than a lower rate applied inefficiently.

A retainer is a deposit against future fees rather than a fee in itself. It is held in the firm's trust account, drawn down as accounts are rendered, and the unused balance is returned when the matter ends. A lawyer should be able to tell you what the initial retainer is, what it is expected to cover, and when they will ask for more.

Disbursements are separate from fees and are frequently underestimated by clients. Court filing fees, process servers, transcripts, expert reports and mediators' fees are all paid out on your behalf and billed to you, and on a contested file the expert and transcript costs alone can be substantial.

Costs recovery is the point that surprises people most. A successful party in Ontario ordinarily recovers a portion of its legal costs from the unsuccessful one, but the recoverable amount falls well short of what was actually spent. Winning does not usually mean being made whole, and any budget built on the assumption that the other side will pay for the litigation is built on sand.

Contingency arrangements, where the lawyer is paid a percentage of what is recovered, are permitted in civil matters and are not permitted in criminal, quasi-criminal or family matters. Since the reforms that came into force on 1 July 2021 they are governed closely: firms must publish the maximum contingency rate they charge, a standard form agreement is required, and the client must be given a consumer guide explaining how the arrangement works. See this firm's contingency fee page for its own posted rates

Certain terms cannot appear in a contingency agreement at all. It cannot require the lawyer's consent before the client settles or discontinues, it cannot prevent the client from ending the agreement or changing lawyers, and it cannot permit the lawyer to split the fee with someone else outside what the Rules allow. If you are presented with an agreement containing any of those provisions, that is a reason to stop and take advice on the agreement itself.

Bring the documents rather than the story. The contract, the correspondence, the order, the demand letter and a one page chronology with dates will let a lawyer give you a useful answer in an hour. Two hours of narrative without documents usually produces a polite response and an invitation to send the documents.

Expect the lawyer to run a conflicts check before hearing the details, and take it as a good sign when they do. Solicitor and client privilege attaches to communications made in seeking legal advice even where you do not go on to retain the lawyer, so a first conversation is protected whether or not it leads anywhere.

The questions worth asking are concrete. What are the weaknesses in my position. What will this cost to get through discovery, and what to get to trial. How long will each stage take. What would you do if you were me. Is there a resolution short of litigation that I should be pursuing first. Who will run the file day to day.

What you are listening for in the answers is candour rather than confidence. A litigator who describes the risks in your case, tells you what they cannot predict, and gives you a range rather than a number is being straight with you. Litigation outcomes depend on evidence that has not been produced yet, findings that have not been made yet, and a judge who has not been assigned yet, and anyone who sounds certain at the first meeting is describing a case they have not yet examined.

A few answers are worth treating carefully wherever you hear them. A guarantee of a particular outcome, since no lawyer can honestly give one. Pressure to sign that day. An unwillingness to put the terms of the engagement in writing. A refusal to give any estimate at all, when a competent litigator can at least describe the range and explain what would move it. And marketing that leans on claims of being the best, which brings the exercise back to where it started.

A second opinion on a matter that is already running is available to you, and asking for one is ordinary rather than disloyal. The professional conduct rules are worth understanding here, because they cut in a direction people do not expect. A lawyer is restricted from approaching or dealing with someone who is already represented by another lawyer on the same matter, so the enquiry has to come from you rather than from the lawyer giving the opinion. That restriction is subject to an express exception for second opinions, and a lawyer giving one will ordinarily confine themselves to the opinion and stay out of the conduct of the matter unless you go on to retain them.

You do not need your current lawyer's permission to ask, and you are entitled to change counsel if you decide to. Bringing the pleadings, the key correspondence and the last few accounts will let a second lawyer give you something useful rather than a general impression.