Ethical Litigation and Ethical Legal Fees

At Gobin & Leyenson LLP, ethical litigation and transparent legal fees are not just professional obligations — they are the foundation of every client relationship.

Ethical Litigation

Ethics are defined as moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or their conduct. Legal professionals, paralegals and lawyers alike, are held to a higher standard than most professions, due to the position they hold and the various professional duties they owe to their clients.

Paralegals and lawyers are required to provide competent services, and must either decline to act on behalf of the client, or must become competent, with the client’s consent and without undue delay, risk, or expense to the client, prior to performing a particular task on the client matter. The services must be delivered with courtesy, thoroughness, and promptly.

Legal professionals must be honest and candid when advising their clients, and are prohibited from knowingly assisting or encouraging dishonesty, fraud, crime, or illegal conduct.

At Gobin & Leyenson LLP, our legal team not only practises ethical litigation, but our firm partners teach the legal subject of ethics in an accredited paralegal program approved by the Law Society of Ontario.

What This Means to Our Clients

Our clients can count on each one of our legal professionals to be honest at all times about their assessment of the client’s case, and provide the most beneficial advice with only the client’s benefit in mind. In other words, we will not recommend pursuing litigation if we believe there is no chance of success or if the likelihood of collecting your sought-after award is low to none.

While we welcome new clients, we believe in ethical litigation for the benefit of our clients first and foremost.

What Are “Ethical Legal Fees”?

The most common question during a consultation is, “What will my case cost me?” and there is no simple answer nor can we provide 100% certainty in most cases. Some cases may be eligible for a contingency fee structure, where we charge a percentage of the amount recovered for our clients. Most of the services we offer are charged on an hourly basis, or a combination of block fees and hourly fees.

We understand the challenges litigants face in today’s economy. At Gobin & Leyenson LLP we not only assist our clients with legal advice, prompt and accurate completion of necessary legal documents, and competent legal representation at the various court or tribunal hearings — we also offer fair, reasonable, and ethical legal fees.

Fair and reasonable fees will depend on such factors as:

• The time and effort required and spent
• Difficulty of the matter
• Whether special skill or services were required and provided
• Results obtained
• Uncertainty of reward or urgency of the matter
• The experience and ability of our team members

We always provide you with our fees prior to being hired, and we confirm all of our fees in a formal Retainer Agreement that you will receive by email and will have time to review and approve, prior to signing it.

Hourly Fees vs. Block Fees

Hourly fees are charged based on the actual time spent on a particular task. We track our time through a legal practice management software application, to the exact minute. The time spent is then multiplied by the hourly rate of the person performing the task, and is displayed on your invoice in decimal hours.

For example: 3 minutes to write an email = 0.10 × $250 per hour = $12.50 charge.

Block fees are charged based on a set of activity, regardless of how much time it may take. There are advantages to block fees in that you always know the amount you will pay for a task before you hire a legal professional. However, there are also disadvantages in that you may be overpaying for a particular task in comparison to hourly legal fees.

What Are Contingency Fees?

Contingency fees are legal fees that are charged on a percentage basis from the results we obtain for our client. If the matter does not settle or if we do not succeed at trial or the hearing, the client does not pay any legal fees for our services. We dedicate our knowledge and our time to advance your case, with the risk of not receiving any compensation.

Most cases for which contingency fees are charged do not require any upfront deposits; however, you may be asked to pay disbursements upfront, such as a filing fee, which are usually fairly low. In some cases, we will offer a block fee structure combined with a contingency fee structure, after having discussed the matter with you.

At the successful conclusion of your case, the settlement or award amount is paid into our trust account, from which we deduct our legal fees, taxes, and disbursements, and pay you the balance.

Not all cases can be offered at the contingency fee structure, either due to the nature of the case or our assessment of the case. Our legal services for cases involving criminal charge defence, provincial charge defence, or residential tenancy law matters cannot be offered on a contingency fee basis.

What Are Disbursements?

Legal fees are charged for the time and the knowledge our team provides to the client. Disbursements are out-of-pocket expenses that we incur on behalf of our clients, for which we are reimbursed at the time of invoicing for our services.

As the Landlord and Tenant Board disputes are now conducted virtually, and the submission of applications and evidence is internet-based, the disbursements in a typical case are minimal. Usually, disbursements include such expenses as the application filing fee paid to the Board, registered mail, Xpresspost, or courier charges.