Here's the whole process for opening your own firm in Ontario: the LSO filings, the new mandatory course, LAWPRO, the structure decision, the software, and the first-90-days mistakes members of my community made so you can skip them. The numbers are 2026 numbers. One scope note: this post is the how. If you're still on whether, start with the going-solo decision and come back.
Step 1: Tell the LSO, and budget 30 hours for the new course
Changing your status to sole practitioner is a filing in the LSO portal. The real new requirement is attached to it: since January 2025, lawyers declaring sole practice for the first time must complete the Foundations of Sole Practice course — about 30 hours, online and modular, CPD-eligible. You don't have to finish it before opening (declare in 2026 and your deadline lands a year or more out, depending on timing), but don't let it drift. Non-completion risks an administrative suspension, which is a bad way to start a firm. The course fee is about $250. Check the LSO store for the current number.
While you're in the LSO's systems: your annual fee as a practising lawyer is $2,080 for 2026, and it doesn't pause because you're starting up.
Step 2: LAWPRO, with the discounts most people miss
You can't practise without professional liability insurance. The 2026 base premium is $3,250 for the standard $1 million per claim / $2 million aggregate coverage, with a $5,000 standard deductible.
Two discounts matter for new firms. The new-lawyer discount scales 50/40/30/20 percent off across your first four years of practice. The part-time option takes 50 percent off if you average under 20 hours a week and bill under $100,000 gross. Discounts cap at 50 percent combined. If you'll touch real estate or civil litigation, budget the transaction levies too: $65 per real estate transaction, $100 per civil litigation file, filed quarterly.
Step 3: The trust account decision
The checklists state this one backwards. You are not required to have a trust account. You're required to have one if you hold client money: retainers in advance, settlement funds, closing funds. Plenty of new solos deliberately structure around it for year one by billing promptly, taking payment for work already done, and holding nothing.
If you do take retainers (most litigators have to), By-Law 9 is the rulebook and it has no grace period for being new. A mixed trust account at an eligible institution (a chartered bank, trust corporation, or credit union), with interest directed to the Law Foundation of Ontario when you open it, the account reported on your LSO Annual Report, monthly reconciliations done by the 25th of the following month, client-by-client ledgers, and every record kept for years. Trust accounting sloppiness is the one first-year mistake that's dangerous. If the bookkeeping discipline isn't there yet, either buy it or don't hold trust funds yet. A legal-savvy bookkeeper runs a couple hundred a month and is the best money you'll spend.
Step 4: Pick a structure (and don't overthink it)
Three realistic options.
Sole proprietorship. Register a business name on the Ontario Business Registry for $60 and you're in business. Simplest, cheapest, and where most solos start. The often-missed fact: incorporating doesn't protect you from professional liability anyway (that's what LAWPRO is for), so the corporation question is mostly a tax question.
Professional corporation. Incorporation runs $300 online plus a NUANS name search, then the LSO's certificate of authorization at $250 plus HST, renewed annually at $100 plus HST. The payoff is tax deferral: income left in the corporation is taxed at the small-business rate, which matters once you earn more than you spend. The rule of thumb members converge on: incorporate when you're reliably leaving money in the business, not on day one. Have the accountant conversation before you file, not after.
Cost-sharing. Separate practices sharing rent, staff, and a photocopier, without merging finances. Underrated for new solos who want colleagues down the hall. Get the arrangement in writing, including what happens when someone leaves.
Step 5: The software stack
You need four systems on day one: practice management, accounting, documents and email, and a way to get paid. As of mid-2026: Clio, the default in Canadian small firms, starts at $69 per user per month on its entry tier ($129 for the tier most firms end up on), with competitors above and below. QuickBooks Online or Xero runs $25 to $80 a month. Microsoft 365 is $8 to $30 per user. Call it $150 to $350 a month all in for a one-lawyer shop. (The full line-by-line budget: what it costs to start a firm in Canada.)
I have no reseller deal with any of these companies, so take this at face value: the tool matters less than the commitment. Members who churned software three times in year one lost more to migrations than they'd have lost using the "wrong" tool well. Pick from the two or three real options in each category, take the trial seriously for two weeks, then commit for a year.
Before client data touches anything AI-shaped in your stack, read what the LSO expects and adapt a written AI policy. It takes an hour.
Step 6: The insurance nobody assigns you
LAWPRO is mandatory. The rest is judgment. Cyber coverage is the one members increasingly treat as non-optional — a one-lawyer firm is a soft target, and trust-account fraud is the nightmare scenario. Office contents if you have an office. Disability insurance, because a solo practice's revenue is your hands and your calendar. Every line of it is cheaper than the event it covers.
The first-90-days mistakes
Pricing too low. Nearly everyone. An empty calendar pushes you to discount, and the discounts stick. Set rates with reference to peers at comparable firms, not what feels safe.
No intake process. The first dozen clients arrive however they arrive, and suddenly there's no consistent conflicts check, no engagement letter template, no file-opening ritual. Build the boring machinery in week one, while it's quiet.
Doing your own bookkeeping too long. The members who outsourced it early are unanimous. Your evenings are worth more than $200 a month.
Waiting too long on the first hire. By the time most owners hire, they're a year past the point the math justified it. The math is here: your firm's first hire.
People to ask
Everything above is doable from a checklist except the part that determines how the first two years feel: having people to ask. The lawyer who set her flat fees last year. The owner who picked the software and lived with it. The solo who can look at your engagement letter Tuesday night because he sent his own version eighteen months ago.
That's what Inn Laws is: a vetted community of Canadian lawyers building their practices a bit differently, with a steady stream of people at exactly your stage working through exactly this list in peer groups and on the member platform. If you're opening your own shop this year, apply below and bring your launch plan. It's a good first question to put to the table.
Numbers in this post are as of June 2026 and change annually. Verify current fees with the LSO, LAWPRO, and vendors before budgeting.