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Frequently Asked Questions |
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Our practice is restricted to family law including collaborative family law. The following are some of the more common issues that we frequently assist clients with:
At this time, we do not deal with child welfare issues or issues involving the Children’s Aid Society. If you are not sure if Fryer & Associates can assist you with your particular issue or if you would like a referral to another lawyer, please feel free to contact us. |
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How do I arrange to meet with a lawyer at Fryer & Associates? |
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If you would like to meet with one of our lawyers, please contact our Intake Coordinator. She will ask you a series of questions which are designed to ensure that your particular issues fit with our area of legal expertise and also to help the lawyer you meet with to prepare for the consultation. This information is always kept confidential. Our Intake Coordinator will always ask you the name of your spouse/partner/fiancée; this is to ensure that we can avoid any conflict of interest in the event this person might have already contacted us or does so in the future. The Intake Coordinator will also ask you to provide some very basic background as to the nature of the issue for which you are seeking legal advice. If you are already involved in a court proceeding, you should advise of any upcoming court dates. Once our Intake Coordinator has confirmed that your issue is likely something we can assist you with, she will arrange for a one hour appointment with one of our lawyers. |
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What if I have already been referred to a specific lawyer at Fryer & Associates? |
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If you have been referred to a specific lawyer at Fryer & Associates, we will do our best to ensure that you meet with that lawyer. If the lawyer who you were referred to is not taking on new clients at a particular time, you will usually be given the opportunity to meet with another of our lawyers or to book an appointment with your original choice at a later date. All of the lawyers at Fryer & Associates are working together because we have a similar practice style. |
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We do not provide a free initial consultation or ‘half hour free’. We do charge a rate that is substantially lower than our usual billing rate for the initial one hour consultation. The idea is that we can devote an hour of our time to discussing your issue(s), you can get a sense of who we are and how we practice and we can both make a determination as to whether we would be a good ‘lawyer/client fit’. Our Intake Coordinator will advise you of the current consultation rate when you contact her. We ask that you pay this fee at the end of the consultation. Once you have met with a lawyer on an initial consultation, we ask that you arrange to formally retain Fryer & Associates if you would like to consult with us further. |
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Can I bring my spouse/partner/fiancée to the initial consultation? |
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Fryer & Associates cannot act for both parties to a matter including marriage contracts or cohabitation agreements. We would ask that you attend meetings with our lawyers including the initial consultation without your spouse, partner or fiancée if that person is involved in the legal issues. Feel free to bring another friend or relative as a support person if you would like. |
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After the consultation, the lawyer you met with will usually provide you with a Retainer Package for you to take home and review. If you decide that you would like to retain the lawyer you met with, you will need to complete the materials in that package and return it along with the retainer funds requested by your lawyer to our Intake Coordinator. Once we have all of that information, we open a file for you in our system and we can commence working for you. |
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The lawyers at Fryer & Associates bill our clients according to typical industry practice by the hour. The lawyers have a range of experience and associated billing rates. Each of our lawyers’ hourly rates is set out in our retainer agreement. We keep detailed records of all of the time spent on your matter. The lawyers of Fryer & Associates are assisted by law clerks who have specialized education and are members of the Ontario Association of Law Clerks. We charge you for our law clerks time at a rate that is significantly lower than that of the lawyer. We typically expect you to provide us with a retainer which is like a pre-payment for services. We hold this money in our trust account and when we have billed you for services rendered, we transfer this money to pay the outstanding account. We expect you to replenish your retainer to maintain a balance. Any unused retainer funds are returned to you at the end of your matter. Our goal is to try to ensure that you resolve your legal disputes in the most cost effective manner possible. |
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This is one of the most difficult questions for lawyers to answer. Much of the expense of legal proceedings, depends not only on you and your lawyer but on the ‘other side’ and his/her lawyer. We do not typically quote flat fees but we will try to give you our best estimate of the cost of various stages of the legal process so that you can factor that in to your instructions to us. We will also try to match you with one of our lawyers based on the complexity of your matter as well as your budget. |
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Collaborative family law is a relatively new way to practice family law. In this process, couples enter into a contract in which they agree to resolve their disputes without proceeding to court. Rather they attempt to resolve their disputes through a series of meeting with each of them and their lawyers present. In order to practice collaborative family law, a lawyer must receive specialized training. The lawyers of Fryer & Associates are certified collaborative law lawyers. If you would like to learn more about CFL, please see our Collaborative Family Law page. |
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