Sole practitioners in Ontario are required by the Law Society to maintain a contingency plan for their practice in case they unexpectedly become unable to practice law or meet their professional obligations.
Although this has been the case since January 1, 2025, the first time we need to confirm with the LSO that we have such a plan in place is on our Annual Reports that are due on March 31, 2026. Naturally, this month I have received numerous inquiries from clients and colleagues about these contingency plans.
As By-Law 7.1 is not always easy reading, I thought a column providing some thoughts and guidance on contingency plans could be helpful to some.
Who needs a contingency plan?
The LSO’s contingency plan requirement applies only to lawyers and paralegals in sole practice or who otherwise run their own firm.[1]
Contingency planning is nevertheless advisable for every lawyer. Even if unlikely, unexpected things happen and one never knows when they may suddenly become unavailable. Clients count on their lawyers to protect their legal rights and interests, and the responsible thing to do is to ensure they are not left high and dry if for whatever reason their lawyer cannot continue to assist.
For lawyers in firms, contingency planning can be relatively a simple matter of ensuring that the partners can—and are well-positioned to—step in to handle client matters and property (including trust funds) if necessary.[2]
How do I get started preparing a contingency plan?
The LSO has provided some helpful resources so sole practitioners do not need start from scratch:
- Checklist: Guidelines for appointing an Administrator and developing a client contingency plan
- Client contingency plan template
I chose to adapt the LSO template when preparing my own contingency plan, and have shared it with some colleagues who have struggled to get started.
Although I appreciate that the LSO prepares thorough guidance on what is expected of licensees, I often find (and hear from clients) that their resources can be a bit overwhelming. A four-page long checklist with compound items can be more daunting than helpful.
I was thus pleased to see that the LSO also prepared this one-pager: 6 Steps to developing a client contingency plan. If you haven’t started yet, I recommend starting there.
What should I include in my contingency plan?
For sole practitioners both inside and outside Ontario, here is my practical summary:[3]
1. Identify another licensee you trust to handle your practice affairs if you cannot (the “Administrator”).
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- This is a bit of a burden, so consider pairing up with another sole practitioner, or imposing on a good friend.
- There are only a few things that must be done by another licensee to wind up your practice (g. disbursements from your trust account).
- You can also appoint a “non-licensee steward” to take care of most of the heavy lifting (g. contacting clients, arranging for the transfer of files) for which another licensee is not required. This person could be your office manager or assistant, or a spouse or family member who might otherwise be arranging your personal affairs if you became incapacitated.
2. Identify crucial details about your practice in one place, including
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- Location and how to access your office and computer
- Contact information for key personnel: staff, bookkeeper/accountant, landlord, etc.
- Location of client files and financial records
- Where to find a master file list (the LSO provides this template; I personally maintain the details identified therein in Clio and Outlook, and noted how to find them in my plan)
- Bank account numbers, passwords, PINs[4]
- CRA tax number (and account login details) and, if incorporated, business number
- Password manager details, if any (note: if you have 2-factor authentication set up on any accounds, be sure you also include details for the phone that will receive confirmation texts or your authenticator app)
3. Set out some basis “how tos”
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- How to access your client files and financial records (not just where are they saved, but also what passwords one needs to get to there)
- How to disburse funds from trust (including how to access/prepare trust cheques, if applicable)
- How to transfer active files to other lawyers (including the names and contact details of a few lawyers you would trust to carry on your matters in your absence)
4. Make a list of what needs to be done if you disappear, which includes
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- Notify the LSO
- Notify LawPRO (or other professional liability insurer)
- Notify clients and seek instructions to transfer or return files
- Access and return (or transfer) trust funds
- Notify contractors/suppliers
- Set an out-of-office voicemail and email auto-reply
Conclusion
Some new regulatory requirements invite debate about whether they are truly necessary or valuable—but this is not one of them.
Requiring sole practitioners to have a contingency plan falls squarely within the Law Society’s fundamental purpose to regulate the legal profession in a manner that protects the public.
It guards against the distinct possibility that clients will be left hanging—or without access to their funds in trust—if their lawyer unexpectedly becomes unavailable. Unfortunately, this happens far more often than any of us would like to believe.
So I recommend setting aside a couple hours to get organized and prepare your plan. Once it’s done, you only need to review it once a year to make sure its details are up to date.
Happy planning!
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[1] Although section 19.2(2) of By-Law 7.1 refers broadly to “A licensee who practises law or provides legal services…”, s. 19.2(1) expressly excludes licensees practising law in government; at a Legal Aid clinic; in an in-house legal department; or through a firm that is a sole proprietorship not owned by the licensee or a partnership. I assume the omission of lawyers practising through professional corporations is inadvertent and PCs are to be grouped in with sole proprietorships (i.e. if you practise through a PC that is owned by another licensee, you are similarly permitted to rely on that licensee to have a contingency plan in place). To my mind it would have been much clearer to specify which licensees actually need to prepare a contingency plan rather than all the licensees who do not, which is what I have done in the text above. As always, my thoughts in this column should not be taken as legal advice and I trust readers will not rely on them as such.
[2] Indeed, even though the new(ish) requirement in By-Law 7.1 applies to sole practitioners only, the LSO’s Annual Report specifically asks licensees in firms whether their firm has “planned for the continuity of client matters and protection of their property in the event of a contingency that fundamentally affects your firm operations”.
[3] The LSO provides the full details of what is required in s. 19.1(3) and (4) of By-Law 7.1.
[4] I am personally disinclined to including passwords and PINs in any electronic document for security reasons, and instead chose to provide (a) the info for my password manager, which has one master password; (b) where the master password is written down; and (c) a written description of my PIN that I know my Administrator and Non-Licensee Steward can discern.
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