Articling Student become a First Year Associate

[newbiecat]

Hi,

I will be called to the Bar next month, and agreed on a salary figure with my boss a few months ago. However, I am hesitant to move forward without an employment contract, as I want to protect myself in all scenarios - specifically, in terms of the quality of work (I do not want to be put in a position where I am not getting increased responsibility or find myself grinding away at the same level of work that I did as an articling student). Naturally, there are advantages for the employer to put it into writing, too, but it is such a small firm that it almost seems impractical to have a written contract. It's not that I suspect that they will be cheating me, but there has historically always been turnover for staff where I work, and I want to do my part to ensure that I have certain security. For instance, my boss promised to pay my licensing fees and OBA/CBA membership fees, but we discussed this orally just once. To ensure that I am not being swindled out of our agreement, is this something you would want incorporated into a contract? Am I overthinking this?

[Ryn]

This is bordering on requesting legal advice so I wouldn't expect many responses to go to the core of your question.

That said, I think it's alright to say that having your arrangement in writing is generally beneficial over verbal arrangements. I wouldn't say it's unusual to have even just a bullet point offer letter that goes over the broad details (I know a lot of firms that do it this way rather than having fully-fledged contracts). But it's also quite common to simply not have a written agreement at all, especially with sole practitioners or small shops. It's a bit counter-intuitive to think, with lawyers being lawyers and all, but you'd be surprised how many lawyers don't follow their own advice. Like, I remember reading an article not long ago that the majority of lawyers don't even have a will even though the going advice from lawyers is generally that having a will is beneficial over not.

If you're concerned, I would speak to an employment lawyer about your options. But perhaps even the first step might be to just approach your firm and ask for your soon-to-be arrangement in writing. How you phrase that in a way so your firm's partners will find reasonable, I will leave up to you.