Employment Lawyers: directory of firms

In Ontario the Employment Standards Act sets minimum entitlements. Its termination rules require an employer to give an employee who has been continuously employed for three months or more either written notice or termination pay in lieu, on a scale that runs from one week to eight weeks with length of service, and the province's own guide is explicit that these are minimum requirements and that some employees have greater rights under the common law.

The same guide warns that an employee cannot sue an employer for wrongful dismissal and also file a claim for termination pay or severance pay for the same dismissal — one route or the other has to be chosen. That is the first real decision in most dismissal files, and the one people most often make by accident when they file a claim online before taking advice.

Discrimination and harassment usually go to a human rights tribunal instead. The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario says an application must be filed within one year of the incident, or within one year of the last incident where there is a series of similar incidents, and that it may hear a late application only where it is satisfied the delay occurred in good faith and will not cause substantial harm to the other parties. One dismissal can raise several of these routes at once, which is why counsel usually wants to see everything before anything is filed.

If the employer is a bank, an airline, a railway, an interprovincial trucking company, a telecommunications or broadcasting business or another federal work, provincial employment standards do not apply. The federal Labour Program's page on eligibility and timelines sets out the routes and the clocks: a monetary complaint, covering unpaid wages, vacation pay, holiday pay, severance and work-related expenses, has to be filed within six months from the last day the employer was required to pay; a non-monetary complaint within six months from the day the employee became aware of the issue; and an unjust dismissal complaint within 90 days from the date of the dismissal.

The unjust dismissal route is narrower than it looks. The Labour Program states that it is open to employees with at least 12 consecutive months of employment with the same employer who are not managers and are not covered by a collective agreement. Extensions are possible in limited circumstances, such as a complaint filed on time but with the wrong government body or in the wrong category. Unionized employees normally go through the grievance procedure in their collective agreement, a separate process with its own time limits.

Billing models shape how a file runs. Hourly billing against a retainer is common for contract reviews and for employer-side work. Some firms quote a fixed fee for a defined piece of work, such as reviewing a severance package and sending one letter. Contingency arrangements, where the fee is a share of what is recovered, are permitted in some provinces and regulated by the law society there, and what the written agreement must contain differs from province to province.

Whatever the model, settle it in writing before work starts and ask what sits outside it: court filing charges, mediation, an expert report or an appeal are often billed separately. Employer-side and employee-side arrangements differ as well, because employers more often buy ongoing advice while an employee is usually paying for one file with an end in sight.

LokalMatch publishes a directory of employment lawyers by city so you can read a firm's own description of its practice and contact it directly. A listing is not an endorsement: there is no quality ranking behind it, no vetting of results, and no recommendation of one firm over another.

Check the licence yourself before hiring anyone. The Federation of Law Societies of Canada describes itself as the national association of the 14 law societies mandated by the provinces and territories to regulate the legal profession in the public interest, and the law societies keep the public records. The Law Society of British Columbia, for example, invites the public to check a lawyer's current practice status, contact details, practice restrictions, discipline history and current regulatory proceedings in its Lawyer Directory, while noting that it cannot refer you to a specific lawyer or give legal advice.