r/lawfirms

i know this is probably said alot but I’m wondering how realistic it is to start a small law firm in the Greater Toronto Area (Canada) after getting around 2–3 years of experience as a lawyer. I’d likely focus on things like real estate, wills/estates, family law, and some basic corporate/commercial work.

For those who have started their own practice relatively early, how difficult was it to actually get clients? Is 2–3 years of experience enough to realistically handle a practice?

I’m especially curious about how people actually got their first clients and whether building a steady client base in the GTA is as difficult as it sounds. and does it make sense to start in a virtual office keeping overhead low).

Are any personal injury attorneys or law firms considering outsourcing demand letters to help take some of the bottleneck off their team?

I’ve been writing personal injury demands full time for the past six years, exclusively as a white-label service for law firms.

I also have a HIPAA-compliant portal that makes exchanging medical records and other documents secure and convenient.

Always happy to connect with other PI professionals. Referrals are appreciated, too.

I have a question. My brother-in-law recently passed away, and his wife mistakenly used his credit card to pay for some funeral expenses and a few other related costs after his passing. She was unaware that she was not allowed to use the card after his death.

Could you please advise what we should do at this point?

Thank you.

I am 22F, 2026 grad from NLU. I am actively searching for job opportunities applied everywhere but not getting reply from any firm. It is getting depressing day by day it has been months with no reply.😭😭😭

I would be greatful if any of the seniors could help me with referral or guide me for the process ahead. 😭😭

Pines Federal Employment Attorneys:

• Paid Intake Consultation: On March 8, 2024, I paid a $500 fee for an intake consultation. I attempted to explain my history but was cut off repeatedly with unproductive comments. Despite paying for a full hour, counsel appeared eager to rush off the phone from the very first minute, and the session was abruptly cut short at 48 minutes.
• Substandard Legal Work: Legal document submissions from Pines were sloppy, riddled with basic misspellings, and contained egregious factual and gender errors (falsely identifying me as female when I am male). The firm routinely promised to share documents in advance for my feedback, failed to do so, and completely missed critical evidence throughout the process.
• Court-Ordered Sanction: Due to the firm missing critical deadlines, the Administrative Judge issued an official legal sanction against my case on January 16, 2025. Unbelievably, the firm then billed me for the hours they spent drafting responses to defend their own administrative errors. Furthermore, they promised to address missing discovery items from the agency but failed to pursue them.  Instead, they wrote a defensive letter to the judge excusing their behavior, and never sought out discovery items that were not supplied by the agency.
• Lack of Attention to Detail: On March 28, 2024, I provided over 1 GB of sensitive documentation, explicitly instructing the assigned attorney, Amanda Moreno, that specific materials were strictly for "attorney eyes only" to build case strategy. These were timelines, indexes and analysis I had done to connect the dots and lay out a strategy. In direct violation of my instructions, she disclosed these documents to the opposing federal agency during discovery, severely compromising my legal position.
• Gaps in Knowledge: Even months into the case, the assigned attorney routinely didn’t read or forgot core facts. I was forced to explain critical elements multiple times, yet they still failed to find their way into the legal materials.
• Unconventionally High Turnover: At Pines, there is an unusually high internal turnover rate; my file was passed between two separate attorneys and two separate paralegals who left the firm, destroying all case continuity.  I felt compelled, and was responsible for getting all of these new folks up to speed on the case. Even the original incompetent lawyer was let go or left the firm.
• Misrepresentation to the Court: We spent exactly 63 minutes on a single phone log-verified call reviewing discovery, yet the attorney formally represented to the federal judge that we had spent three hours actively coordinating and preparing the file.
• Hostile Client Management: If you express legitimate disappointment regarding these failures to managing partner Eric Pines, you are immediately redirected to Operations Manager Steven Tu, who acts as an aggressive, dismissive, and entirely apathetic barrier to accountability.

The Verdict: Avoid this firm at all costs. They are highly skilled at online marketing, but completely incompetent at practicing law. They treat vulnerable federal employees as transactional numbers, display zero human courtesy, and their profound administrative laziness actively destroys the cases they are paid to protect.

Curious if anyone here has firsthand experience with Annie Brown’s Prospect Providers, specifically for auto injury/PI marketing.

The pricing definitely gave me a little sticker shock, but I’m not opposed to spending the money if the results and quality of cases are actually there.

For anyone who’s used them: how was your experience, and did you feel like the ROI justified the cost? Would you use them again?

Trying to understand how people really handle this instead of guessing. After a client call, what's your workflow for writing it up for the file, following up with the client, and logging your time?

Curious if anyone's tried an AI tool for it — Clio Duo, Basil AI, Otter, whatever — and if so, what made you keep it or drop it.

Not selling anything, genuinely trying to learn from people who deal with this daily.

https://reddit.com/link/1vhfysp/video/bu5q08s8fthh1/player

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Running a small law firm is great until you hit that wall where client intake and lead generation become a complete headache, and I'm completely lost on what to do next.

Before I do anything rash, has anyone here dealt with a similar dilemma? How do you decide if it's time to hand marketing over to an outside team versus keeping it internal, and what red flags should I look out for when talking to agencies?