04/ Prosper
You've built a practice. Your professional corporation should be building wealth.
Most lawyers who practise through a professional corporation are using it for the basics — tax deferral, maybe some retained earnings. That's a start. But a PC offers significantly more than most lawyers realize, and the window to take full advantage of it is open for a limited time.
This is where the planning work shifts from protection to wealth building. Working with me is like having a personal CFO in your corner — someone who coordinates the strategy, the compensation structure, and the right financial professionals to make the whole picture work together.
The most tax-efficient wealth building tool most lawyers aren't using is their PC.
How you pay yourself matters as much as how much you earn.
The flexibility to structure how you're paid is a massive opportunity — and most lawyers don't use it deliberately. Salary versus dividends. Timing of draws. Pension contributions. The way you structure compensation through a PC has a direct impact on personal tax, insurance eligibility, entitlement to valuable government benefits, and long-term wealth accumulation. Most of those decisions get made by default rather than by design.
Retained earnings sitting in the PC are an opportunity most lawyers miss.
Corporate-owned life insurance lets the PC accumulate wealth in a tax-advantaged environment. Premiums are paid with after-tax corporate dollars — taxed at a significantly lower rate than personal income. The policy builds cash value inside the corporation. At death, the benefit flows to the corporation tax-free and can be distributed to your estate through the capital dividend account, largely free of personal tax. For lawyers with retained earnings sitting in the PC, this is often the most efficient place to deploy that capital.
There's a pension option most lawyers don't know about.
For lawyers who qualify, an Individual Pension Plan through the PC provides higher contribution limits than an RRSP and creates a deductible funding obligation for the corporation. The contribution room depends on age and income history — which is exactly why this is a conversation to have sooner rather than later.
I design the insurance component and make sure it fits your bigger picture.
The right wealth building strategies & structure depend on your compensation model, your timeline, and your existing advisors. I design the insurance component and make sure it fits the big picture, including any tax strategies your accountant is using, as well as any investment or accumulation work your investment advisor or portfolio manager is doing. To talk about how to get the most out of your PC, book an introductory call to see if we might be a fit.
The way you organize your practice now determines what it's worth later.
Practice valuation and succession planning aren't just retirement conversations. The decisions you make now — how the practice is organized, what agreements are in place, how wealth is accumulated inside the PC — directly affect what a buyer will pay, what a transition will look like, and what you'll walk away with.
What a buyer actually pays for is goodwill — and goodwill is transferable only if it's been deliberately built with the end in mind. A practice where clients are loyal to the firm rather than the individual lawyer, where systems are documented, where processes don't live in one person's head, and where recurring revenue is predictable is worth significantly more than one that isn't. The same practice, better organized, can command a materially different price.
Practice area matters too. Transactional practices — wills and estates, real estate, corporate and commercial — tend to transfer well because client relationships are less personal. Litigation practices, and particularly criminal law, are harder to sell because clients tend to hire the lawyer more than the firm.
Proactive planning is what turns a demanding job into an asset and legacy.