01/ Plan
By-Law 7.1 protects your clients. A practice continuity plan protects everything else.
Ontario's By-Law 7.1 requires lawyers in private practice to have a client contingency plan. It's a mandatory obligation, but it's a narrow one. The By-Law is designed to protect your clients if you can't practise. It says nothing about protecting you.
A client contingency plan answers one question: what happens to your clients if you can't work tomorrow? A practice continuity plan answers the harder ones. What happens to your revenue? Your overhead? Your firm's viability? Your family's financial security?
I work through those questions with you and put the structure in place to protect everything you’ve built.
Start with a Practice Continuity Assessment.
A sudden absence has a way of exposing every gap at once. Most lawyers know that. Finding the time to do something about it is the harder part.
The Practice Risk Assessment is a structured 60–90 minute working session. No forms to fill out in advance. We go through your practice together: how it's structured, what it costs to run, what it generates, and what your current coverage actually protects.
After the session, I analyze the findings and deliver a written report — the kind you'd be comfortable sharing with your accountant, estate lawyer, or financial advisor.
The Practice Continuity Assessment is a standalone engagement. Some lawyers complete it and take the findings elsewhere. Most use it as the foundation for the work that really moves the needle.
What the assessment covers:
Practice profile and continuity exposure — structure, practice area, revenue concentration, and time-sensitivity of active work
Operational continuity — who can access your systems, files, and accounts if you can't, and what they'd actually find when they got in
Client protection readiness — an honest assessment of your By-Law 7.1 compliance, not just confirmation that a plan exists on paper
Financial exposure: the practice — monthly overhead, fixed costs, revenue timeline, and how long the firm could absorb an absence before it fails
Financial exposure: the person — personal obligations, household runway, and the real gap between what you'd need and what your existing coverage would actually replace
Recovery planning — your current position across three scenarios: short absence, extended absence, and permanent incapacity or death
What you receive:
A written Practice Risk Assessment report — six categories, each rated Red / Amber / Green with a narrative finding
A prioritized action plan identifying what needs to be addressed, in what order, and why
The Practice Continuity Plan.
For lawyers who want to close the gaps the assessment reveals, the Practice Continuity Plan is the full engagement. It starts where the assessment ends.
We build a working document — not a compliance exercise, not a shelf document — that maps out exactly what happens to your practice under every scenario, and puts the operational infrastructure in place to make those plans executable.
For Ontario lawyers, this includes full By-Law 7.1 compliance. But it goes well beyond it.
What's included:
By-Law 7.1 Client Contingency Plan — the mandatory compliance component, built to the LSO's requirements and beyond
Administrator designation framework — selection criteria, role documentation, and the authority instruments your administrator needs to act
Full operational access documentation — files, trust accounts, software credentials, key contacts, and the practice intelligence someone else would need to actually run things
Scenario planning across three time horizons — short absence, extended absence, and permanent incapacity or death — with decision logic at each stage
Financial continuity analysis — what the practice needs to stay viable, and how to fund that across each scenario
Estate integration guidance — how the plan connects to your Will and Powers of Attorney, and why it matters
LSO filing and compliance guidance
A written Action Plan — the roadmap for what needs to be addressed next: personal financial protection, practice viability, and succession planning
We manage the various projects we’ve identified to address all your gaps and needs
Annual Maintenance.
A continuity plan that doesn't get updated is just a document. Your practice changes. Your revenue changes. Your team changes. Regulatory obligations change. Your personal obligations change.
The annual maintenance engagement keeps everything current. It also keeps the planning relationship active, which matters more than most lawyers expect. When something significant changes — a health event, a key associate leaving, a new line of credit, a change in revenue — you want someone already in the loop, not starting from scratch.
What's included annually:
Annual review meeting — a structured session to identify what's changed and what needs updating
Plan updates — revised documentation to reflect practice and personal changes
Regulatory review — any By-Law 7.1 or LSO requirement changes incorporated
Insurance policy review — coverage checked against current practice economics and personal obligations
Updated action plan — gap report refreshed to reflect current status