About Open Family Law

Our Origins

Open Family Law was founded by a former Toronto Bay Street lawyer with a mission to make family law services affordable to Ontarians. Having witnessed first hand the state of access to family law services in Ontario, he decided to see if there was something that could be done to improve the situation. After much thought about how to create a sustainable solution to this problem, Open Family Law was born.

Traditional law firms often charge $300 to $700 per hour, making family law services inaccessible to many Ontarians. This creates a significant gap in access to justice, leaving families to navigate the complexity of the family law system alone.

Our $195/hour rate and limited scope services allow you to get the legal help you need at a much more affordable rate than what traditional law firms offer.

Who Are Our Services Intended For?

Our family law services are designed for self represented parties or self represented litigants. A self represented party or self represented litigant (often referred to as a "self rep") is someone who represents themselves in court or through the litigation process or in alternative dispute resolution (e.g. negotiation, mediation, etc).

Open Family Law does not work like a traditional law firm. Traditional law firms generally represent clients in court and appear "on the record". Instead, we assist our self represented clients with the family law process by providing family law services such as court document drafting, document review, legal advice, and help with financial disclosure, among other family law services. All of our services are provided on a limited scope retainer (also known as unbundled services) basis. This means that you retain us for a specific service or services. Additional services can be added later upon agreement to a new limited scope retainer.

We deal with family law issues including child support, spousal support, child custody (also known as decision making responsibility), access (also known as parenting time), divorce, separation, separation agreements, simple divorces, and other issues.

How Are You Able to Provide Services at Your Rate?

It's really quite simple. Law firms are, compared to many other types of businesses, low overhead operations. Especially in today's age, thanks to the help of legal and other general business software, much more can be done without the need for an expensive office (or even any office!), a secretary, and even an assistant, depending on the number of clients served. Your overhead then is often limited mostly to your professional association fees, professional insurance, some office equipment expenses, and perhaps marketing spend. These costs typically do not amount to a significant amount of a lawyer's revenue.

So ultimately charging the rate that we do is mostly a matter of simply deciding to charge such a rate. A reasonable profit can still be made, even at our rates. And for some lawyers, getting to do their preferred kind of work, and way of work, makes it all worth it.

Some Family Law Statistics

Did you know that the majority of people that appear in family court are self represented?¹ That's right. Most people do not have a lawyer representing them in court for their family law matter. That is why we think it is especially important for self represented parties to have the assistance of a lawyer to help them prepare their family law case. This way you can improve your odds of success in court.

¹ Statistics Canada. (2021). Catalogue no. 85-002-X. Government of Canada.