Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Charity Lawyer

Charity and Not-for-Profit Law are very niche areas of law.

In fact, there are only a handful of lawyers across Canada who are experts in these two areas of law.

The first thing to do when searching for a Charity or Not-for-Profit lawyer is to look for experience and practice focus.

Here are some questions to ask a charity lawyer before hiring him or her:

1. With approximately 50% of all charity applications being rejected, do you guarantee charity registration?
2. How many years’ experience do you have in the charity area of law?
3. Approximately how many charity applications and registration have your processed?
4. Are you fees fixed or do you charge per hour?
5. If you allow for fixed fees, what do they include? Do they include all registration fees, HST, correspondence with the CRA, all the way to registration? Or do the fees only cover the application?