Sara Forte describes her legal career as a steady descent down the corporate ladder, with success found at the bottom. Owning a small suburban law firm was certainly not in the plans when she graduated from Queens’ Law in 2003 and set out to article and practice at BLG’s Vancouver office. Forte Law is a boutique firm practicing only in the areas of labour, employment law and workplace human rights. From launching as a solo practice in late 2016, the firm has grown to a team of nine (and hiring!).
Sara’s practice is far from the traditional practice she left downtown. The day-to-day varies wildly, but rarely involves a full day at her desk. A mother of three school-aged children, Sara decided to set up Forte Law’s office close to home, and she is less than 5 km away from home, school, baseball diamonds and the local arena.
She often takes time during the work day to attend events at school, or drive her kids to activities. While that sometimes means evening work, the close geographic proximity means little time lost to commuting and the ability to “pop out” and be back to work quickly.
Being sole owner of the firm also gives Sara the freedom to set professional priorities, with full discretion to decide what type and how much client work to take on and what non-billable projects to take on. In early 2019, Sara became frustrated with continuous wave of appalling statistics reported in #metoo stories. She made it her goal for 2019 to create dialogue and publicly share information about tools to prevent workplace sexual harassment. This started with an op-ed published in the Globe & Mail and has continued with many other writings and speaking engagements, most recently as the keynote speaker at the Yukon Human Rights Commission’s Know More conference. Much of this is non-billable, but it is enormously fulfilling.
Being sole owner of the firm also gives Sara the freedom to set professional priorities, with full discretion to decide what type and how much client work to take on and what non-billable projects to take on. In early 2019, Sara became frustrated with continuous wave of appalling statistics reported in #metoo stories. She made it her goal for 2019 to create dialogue and publicly share information about tools to prevent workplace sexual harassment. This started with an op-ed published in the Globe & Mail and has continued with many other writings and speaking engagements, most recently as the keynote speaker at the Yukon Human Rights Commission’s Know More conference. Much of this is non-billable, but it is enormously fulfilling.
Suburban law practice has also brought Sara’s practice very close to her clients. She thrives on face to face, and (pre-pandemic) sat down with clients daily. This has of course moved to zoom but still has a high degree of personal connection. Employment law disputes are often very distressing, and Sara gets a lot of satisfaction from empowering clients to resolve those disputes and move past them.
On the financial side, Sara is out-earning all of her past positions, and if she chose to focus more time on client work and less on family time and non-billable passion projects, it would be even more lucrative. If you take into consideration house prices in the suburbs vs downtown and a commute of 15 minutes walking, those are also significant financial advantages over a traditional, downtown practice.
Want to start a suburban law firm? Sara’s advice is to start by connecting with lawyers who are already practicing there. You can learn a lot from how others have set up their practices, and start building a network. If meeting other lawyers (and people) is not your thing, a suburban law practice may not be either. You can also check out resources on your Law Society’s website (for example, LSBC has a practice resource on Opening a Law Practice).