02/ Protect
Your client contingency plan doesn’t pay your family bills.
If you were off work for six months — or couldn't come back at all — could your family keep going?
Most lawyers assume the answer is yes until they do the math. A proper gap analysis compares your actual income and obligations against what your existing coverage would actually replace. Group plans, individual policies, savings — most people are surprised by what the numbers show.
This is the work that protects your income and your lifestyle. An unfunded continuity plan is just a document.
It starts with a conversation.
We start with a conversation to identify any gaps — we look at your income, your obligations, your existing coverage, and the difference between what you have and what you'd actually need. It takes about 15 minutes to find out where you stand.
The goal: to build a personal insurance program that reflects how you actually practise and how you actually get paid.
What we design.
Coverage built for lawyers’ personal needs
Off-the-shelf coverage is designed for employees who receive a paycheque. Lawyers, especially those practising through a professional corporation, or drawing income from a mix of salary and dividends, have a different financial structure. Most existing policies don't account for that. Some insure the wrong entity entirely.
I design personal insurance programs that reflect the actual reality of how you’re paid.
Disability insurance.
The most important coverage for lawyers, and the one many don't have right. The definition of disability matters more than the benefit amount — own-occupation coverage pays if you can't practise law specifically, not just if you can't work at all. Group plans almost never provide own-occupation definitions. Waiting periods, benefit periods, and cost-of-living adjustments all affect what you'd actually receive. We review what you have and close the gaps.
Critical illness insurance.
A lump-sum payment on diagnosis of a covered condition — cancer, heart attack, stroke, and others. It's not income replacement. It's financial flexibility at the moment you need it most: to pay down debt, fund treatment, or keep the practice viable while you recover. Most lawyers don't have it. Many who do have it through a group plan or have coverage that's too low to matter.
Life insurance.
If your practice is a going concern and your family depends on your income, the right life insurance amount isn't a round number — it's a calculation. We look at your actual obligations, your practice's value, any buy-sell obligations, and what your family would need to maintain financial security. If you practice through a professional corporation it's important to work through tax considerations and structure your life insurance program properly.
You need an insurance program, not a stack of policies.
The goal isn't insurance coverage for its own sake. It's a personal insurance program that works as a coherent whole — where the coverage types fit together, the amounts are right, and the structure reflects how you practise, how you pay yourself, and your budget.
I support you through every stage: gap analysis and insurance needs review, coverage design, product selection, carrier selection, application, and underwriting. Once coverage is in place, your program is documented and stored in a secure digital vault through our partners at SideDrawer. We also review your program annually, so as your practice evolves and your needs change, your insurance program keeps pace.
It's not a transaction. It's a program intentionally designed to work when you need it most.
About Sidedrawer
Sidedrawer is a leading enterprise-grade digital vault.
The vault is accessible to you and to the people who would need to act in an emergency — your administrator, executor, spouse, or successor. In a crisis, the last thing anyone should be doing is searching for policy documents. Everything is organized, labelled, and accessible to the right people from the moment it's set up.
As a client of our insurance brokerage service, you can also use your SideDrawer vault to store other important documents — your client contingency or continuity plan, your Will, your Powers of Attorney, corporate resolutions, shareholder agreements, or anything else that matters. It's a secure digital home for the paperwork your practice and your family need to access in an emergency.
Here’s where many lawyers go wrong with their coverage.
These aren't edge cases — they come up all the time in our conversations with lawyers.
– Group disability coverage with an any-occupation definition (pays only if you can't work at all, not if you can't practise law)
– Benefit amounts calculated on salary, not total compensation (lawyers drawing dividends through a professional corporation are routinely underinsured)
– Coverage placed in the wrong entity (personal coverage owned by the corporation, or corporate coverage that doesn't flow to the right place)
– Waiting periods that don't align with actual cash reserves (90-day elimination periods on coverage when the practice has 30 days of runway)
– Life insurance amounts set years ago that no longer reflect practice value, debt levels, or family obligations
– No critical illness coverage at all, or group coverage with a benefit cap that wouldn't cover a month of obligations