Getting ready for your consultation appointment

Thanks for booking a consultation with us. Here’s what you need to know before you come in:

What to Bring

• Two pieces of ID (one must be government‑issued with a photo)
• Any paperwork related to the matter you’d like to discuss

What to Expect

During our consultation, we’ll learn more about your situation and help you understand your options.

This consultation might be enough all by itself, or you might wish to hire us to help with more work. We would be happy to help you with additional work if we can.

If we can’t help you further, we’ll do our best to refer you to another professional or service that may be able to assist.

How we bill

We bill on an hourly basis, and our minimum consult fee is for one hour.

Our usual hourly rate ranges from $300-$400 an hour, depending on the type of work you need help with. Work involving complex land issues or complex estate planning will likely be at the higher end of that range.

We will bill you for any disbursements in our consultation. Disbursements might include:

• doing title, tax or assessment searches, or
• ordering copies of documents on title to your property

If you want to hire us for more help, we will ask you for retainer. The amount of the retainer will vary based on the work you need help with. We will require that retainer to be paid before we begin our work with you.

Need extra help?

Please let us know if you:

• need help reading or understanding documents during your consultation, or
• have accessibility or communication needs.

We’ll do our best to accommodate you.

Give yourself lots of time

Please come to your appointment a few minute early. This lets you find parking and gives us time to get your ID and set you up in our system.

Please do not bring extra people or animals with you to your consultation appointment. We must make sure you aren’t being forced to sign things, or distracted by children or pets. Service animals and translators are, of course, allowed.

Be kind

It’s always surprising to have to say this out loud, but we do not tolerate abuse, of our staff, ourselves or the legal system.

We will refuse service to persons who are rude, abusive, who throw things or have tantrums. And yes, these are all real‑life things that have happened.

We will also refuse to continue with your consultation appointment if you appear to be taking advantage of another person, or bringing documents which are invalid or appear to have fraudulent purposes.

We love helping our clients within our professional obligations, and will often go out of our way to help where we can. When we can’t help, we will always let you know.

We look forward to meeting you for your consultation.

Contact us if you have any questions!