Referral Fees For Ontario Lawyers – Paying and Receiving Referral Fees

Part Two of a Three Part Series on Ontario Lawyer Referral Fees

At Ferguson Barristers LLP we work with a referral network of Ontario lawyers and Ontario law firms to provide service in personal injury law and civil litigation to clients in smaller communities. We’ve prepared a three part blog series on referral fees in Ontario to help lawyers better understand the referral process and how the fees are divided.

Ferguson Barristers is largely a personal injury practice and, as such, the vast majority of our work is done on a contingency fee basis, receiving a percentage of the recovery as our fee. However, many Ontario personal injury law firms in still continue to track and docket hourly rates to use as a measurement for how much work is going into each file.

We generally expect to pay a referral fee on almost every contingency fee file referred to our office. As stated in Part One on referral fees, the usual rates are 10-15% of our total fee depending upon the risk involved, the level of our success, and the amount we’ve paid out in disbursements.

As far as our firm’s expectation to receive a referral fee, it would be typically only in a contingency fee situation. The types of litigation that we typically refer to our network of referring Ontario lawyers are all manner of commercial work, drafting of wills and estates, family law and criminal matters. Generally speaking we would not expect a referral fee on any sort of referral made for work that being done strictly on an hourly rate.

And, of course, Rule 2.08 specifically prohibits paying or receiving a referral fee due to conflict of interest.

Interested in our Referring Lawyer program?  Please contact  our personal injury and Midland, Sudbury or North Bay, Ontario law office and one of our lawyers will be happy to discuss the program with you.