When Do You Need an Employment Lawyer?

When it comes to employment law, there’s no shortage of information out there. From blogs to TikToks to YouTube videos, there’s a wealth of knowledge available at your fingertips. And let’s not forget about the government guides – they’re a great resource for staying up-to-date on the latest employment laws and regulations. While there’s a ton of information that can help employers navigate employment issues DIY, there are still situations where you really need an employment lawyer. 

Let’s be real – running a business can be a real headache sometimes, especially when you throw in all the legal mumbo jumbo. That’s where employment lawyers come in – we’re the legal experts who can help you navigate the murky waters of employment law and protect your business.

Continue Reading Time to Call in the Pros: When Do You Need an Employment Lawyer?
termination process and employee entitlements

Many HR professionals say the toughest part of their job is employee terminations. No surprise there, and it’s usually no day at the beach for the exiting employee either. Mapping out the termination process and employee entitlements in advance will reduce the sting of terminations for both sides. 

It Pays to be Nitpicky!

Another reason to have all ducks in a row: courts have awarded additional damages for aspects of the manner of dismissal that may seem a little nitpicky. A few examples: an employer’s failure to provide a written termination letter, late statutory payments, miscalculations in statutory amounts, and inaccurate ROEs. Courts have also called employers out for failing to explain an employee’s rights in a termination letter. All the more reason for employers to tighten up their termination process and termination letter template.

Continue Reading Softer Landings Save Time, Effort and Legal Fees for Employers and Employees
Legal Fees Explained

So you’ve decided that you’d like to hire an employment/labour law firm. What about legal fees? You’ve seen the ads on TV and online where lawyers promise not to take a cut of anything until you win. Other lawyers’ services seem to cost an arm and a leg. How do you navigate the world of legal fees? This can be tricky, so below we’ve outlined some of the most common fee structures for employment lawyers.

Hourly Rate

This is one of the most popular fee structures used by employment lawyers. The lawyer charges an hourly rate for their time, and the client pays for the actual time spent working on the case. Basically, the lawyer will track every minute (or even every six minutes, to be exact) they spend on your case, and they’ll charge you for that time. That means if they spend 18 minutes on the phone with you, they’re gonna bill you for 0.3 hours.

Continue Reading Show Me the Money: Legal Fees Explained

Join SpringLaw’s Tiffany Thomas and Evaleen Hellinga as they discuss employee accommodations and how long an employer must accommodate an employee before considering termination.

Date: Wednesday, April 19, 2023
Time: 10:30-11:00 am EST
Register today: Click here!

Continue Reading Free Webinar: Complex Employee Statuses
April-5-23

Fixed-term or temporary employment contracts can be a useful tool for short-term employment such as temporary replacements for employees on leave, co-op students or employees performing work funded by a time-limited grant. When drafted and executed correctly, employment ends at the end of the fixed-term contract and no further termination entitlements are owed. 

However, when fixed-term contracts are misused, they can become very risky for employers. Below are four mistakes for employers to avoid when hiring on a fixed-term contract.

Continue Reading 4 Common Mistakes to Avoid with Fixed-Term Contracts

I launched SpringLaw on April 1, 2017, with the mission to be a fully virtual, tech-forward employment law firm in the cloud. Although this now feels like a thousand years ago, before a global pandemic introduced the world to the ease of online communications and business, our purpose remains to disrupt old-school law in order to provide an amazing client journey. 

We continue to solve workplace law issues through leading-edge, tech-forward collaboration with our virtual-only team, located throughout Ontario. We have built a web of internal communications, frequent team video & chat touchpoints, online-first systems and our data conveyor belt which are all focused on making the client journey as effective, efficient and practical as possible. 

Thank you to all of our amazing clients, our workplace law community, our allies and all the friends and family who have supported us along the way.

SpringLaw’s First 6 Years by the Numbers

  1. We’ve grown from 1 lawyer and an assistant to 9 lawyers, 2 paralegals, and 3 operational gurus. We continue to grow and have just posted for a new Marketing Manager.
  2. We’ve opened over 1300 client matters, serving a mix of employers and employees and the full range of workplace law issues.
  3. We’ve hosted 41 of our free monthly webinars, all posted on our YouTube channel.
  4. We’ve written over 300 weekly blog posts.
  5. We share those posts monthly with our 2500+ newsletter subscribers.
  6. Most importantly, between the 14 people on our team, we have 9 dogs, 1 cat, 2 guinea pigs and 1 rabbit. Critical law firm numbers, I know.
Continue Reading SpringLaw is 6 years old!!
An Employer’s Guide to Managing Employees with Progressive Discipline

If you’re an employer, you know that, whether you have 10 employees or 100, there is an art to managing your workforce and a well-oiled human resource process is necessary for a well-run business. You invest a lot of time and money into your employees and, understandably, expect attendance, productivity, and proper work conduct in return that will benefit your business as a whole. 

If you have employees who aren’t meeting the expectations of their role, it’s important not to have a knee-jerk reaction. Instead, progressive discipline gives both the employer and employee the opportunity to get on the same page and provides the employee with a roadmap for improvement.

Continue Reading An Employer’s Guide to Managing Employees with Progressive Discipline

Come join SpringLaw’s smart, tech-forward team!

We are a busy team of lawyers looking for a marketing whizz to help spread the word to employers and employees who could really use our innovative tech-forward legal solutions. This is the perfect role for a marketing generalist who is passionate about employment law, or law in general. If you are a brand-builder, with a talent for project management, and you’re looking for a high-impact position to grow your career, SpringLaw might be for you!

Continue Reading SpringLaw is Hiring a Marketing Manager
Update Employment Contracts Following Substantial Changes to the Job

With St. Patrick’s Day having just passed, many of us start to bank on luck at this time of the year. While luck might get you to the end of the rainbow on some things, we wouldn’t recommend that you lean on luck when it comes to non-existent, outdated or incomplete employment contracts. 

The Consequences of Leaving it up to Luck

First, in case you’re new here or need a quick refresher, employment contracts are often recommended by lawyers and adopted by employers to bring a level of certainty to the employment relationship. Employment contracts can achieve a variety of things but generally, they set out the responsibilities and expectations of the employee and employer. If the employment relationship is bound by provincial employment standards legislation (it usually is), then the contract has to, at the very least, uphold the minimum standards of the applicable legislation. 

If your employment contract runs afoul of the applicable employment standards legislation by failing to uphold the minimum standards as required by the law, your contract could be deemed unenforceable. Contracts could also be found to be unenforceable if they fail to comply with the principles of contract law. 

Continue Reading Don’t Leave it to Luck: Update Employment Contracts Following Substantial Changes to the Job
Update on COVID-19 Layoff Provisions

This past Monday marked the three-year anniversary of the date the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Since that fateful day in 2020, a lot has changed. Though there remain areas where transmission rates are still high, increased vaccination rates, higher immunity, and public health measures have helped curtail the spread of the virus and significantly decreased the rate of new infections in Canada. 

As a result, many provinces and territories are revoking laws that were amended or implemented as a result of the virus. For example, about a month ago, Alberta repealed the COVID-19 layoff provisions in its Employment Standards Code (the “ESC”). This followed a trend we saw with the federal government as well as many other provinces such as Ontario. 

Continue Reading Update on COVID-19 Layoff Provisions