Terms of Service

LawyersList (lawyerslist.ca) is an online directory of lawyers and law firms in Canada. It is built, operated and billed by Synmek (“Synmek”, “we”, “us”, “our”).

These terms are an agreement between you and Synmek. They apply whenever you use LawyersList, including when you:

• search the directory or read a profile (a “visitor”);
• send a message to a lawyer or leave a review;
• create an account, claim or manage a lawyer listing or a firm page (a “listing owner”); or
• buy a paid plan or firm seats.

By using LawyersList you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you use LawyersList on behalf of a law firm or other organisation, you confirm that you are authorised to accept these terms for it, and “you” includes that organisation. If you do not agree, please do not use LawyersList.

LawyersList does not provide legal advice and is not a law firm, lawyer referral service or law society. Nothing on LawyersList, including guides, practice-area pages and profile content, is legal advice. Using LawyersList, viewing a profile or sending a message through it does not create a lawyer–client relationship with anyone, including with Synmek.

We do not recommend, endorse or guarantee any lawyer or firm. Listings, ratings, badges and placement are not a statement about a lawyer's skill, suitability for your matter or likely outcome. A lawyer–client relationship starts only when you and a lawyer agree to it directly, on terms you agree with them.

Before hiring anyone, confirm their status with their provincial or territorial law society, check for conflicts of interest and agree on fees in writing. LawyersList is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, any law society.

• You must be at least 18 years old, and able to enter a binding contract, to create an account.
• Give accurate information and keep it up to date, including your sign-in email address.
• Keep your password and sign-in codes private. You are responsible for activity on your account. Tell us at hello@lawyerslist.ca straight away if you think someone else has accessed it.
• Each lawyer may have one personal listing. Do not create duplicate, misleading or placeholder listings.
• You can sign in with email and password, a one-time email link or code, or Google. When you use Google, Google's own terms also apply.
• You can delete your account at any time from your account settings once any paid plan has ended (see section 16).

Listings we create

To make the directory useful, we may create listings for lawyers and firms from publicly available professional information, such as public law society directories and firm websites. These listings show professional information only (for example name, firm, office location, practice areas and business contact details). The lawyer or firm can claim the listing to manage it, or ask us to correct or remove it at hello@lawyerslist.ca.

Claiming a listing

You may only claim a listing for yourself, or for a firm or lawyer you are authorised to act for. We may confirm a claim by sending a code to an email address on the listing's website domain, or by reviewing your claim request manually, and we may ask for more information (for example your law society number). We may refuse or reverse a claim at our discretion, including where we believe it is not genuine.

Your responsibilities as a listing owner

• You are responsible for everything on your listing and firm page, and for keeping it accurate, current and not misleading.
• You confirm that each lawyer listed is licensed and in good standing with the law society shown, and you will update or unpublish the listing promptly if that changes (for example a suspension, a change in licence status, retirement or leaving a firm).
• Your listing is advertising of legal services. It must comply with the rules of professional conduct and marketing rules of every law society that regulates you, including rules about claims of specialisation or expertise, testimonials, fees, comparisons and guarantees of results. Only describe yourself as a certified specialist if your law society has certified you.
• Do not include confidential client information, or anything you do not have the right to publish.

Our rights over listings

To keep the directory accurate and safe, we may review, edit for format, lock specific fields, hide, unpublish or remove any listing, firm page, image or review, with or without notice. This includes content that appears inaccurate, misleading, inappropriate or in breach of these terms or professional rules. We may also mark a listing as unverified or remove a verification badge. Where practical, we will tell you what we changed and why.

Verification badges

A “Verified” badge means we completed the verification checks described on LawyersList at the time, such as confirming control of a website domain or reviewing information you provided. It is not a guarantee of identity, licensing, standing or quality. Some verification methods require you to keep our badge on your website. If the badge is removed or your website changes, verification may lapse after a grace period. Verification is never sold separately and does not depend on your plan.

• The account that owns a firm page controls it. That includes the firm's details, inviting and removing lawyers, assigning firm plan seats, and managing profiles the firm runs on a lawyer's behalf.
• A firm may only list, or manage a profile for, a lawyer who works with the firm and has agreed to it. The firm owner is responsible for making sure each lawyer's profile is accurate, and for removing lawyers who leave.
• A lawyer who has their own account can leave a firm at any time. Leaving ends any firm seat and the plan features that came with it.
• Firm plans are priced per seat. A seat gives the assigned lawyer the firm's plan features while they hold it. If a firm reduces its seats below the number in use, seats are removed from lawyers automatically, starting with the most recently updated profiles.

“Your content” means anything you add to LawyersList: profile text, photos, logos, cover images, office details, reviews and messages. You keep ownership of your content.

You give Synmek a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, resize, format, translate, display and distribute your content to operate and promote LawyersList. For example, we may show your public profile in search results, on related pages, in our emails and newsletters, on social media and in search engines. This licence ends when your content is removed from LawyersList, except for reasonable backup copies, content already shared (such as a sent email), and copies we must keep by law.

You confirm that you own your content or have every permission needed to publish it, and that it does not infringe anyone's rights. In particular:

• headshots must be a genuine, professional photo of the lawyer;
• logos must belong to the firm, or the firm must be licensed to use them;
• you must have the photographer's or rights holder's permission for any image;
• images must not contain offensive, sexual, violent or discriminatory material, other people's trademarks, or added text, contact details or advertising.

Uploaded images go live straight away and are checked by our team afterwards. We may remove an image and stop it being uploaded again. When we remove one, we will email the listing owner the reason.

Reviews help people choose a lawyer, so they must be honest. If you leave a review, you confirm that:

• it describes your own genuine experience as a client, or a prospective client who consulted the lawyer;
• you are not the lawyer, a colleague, family member or competitor, and you have no conflict of interest;
• you were not paid, given a discount or offered anything in exchange for the review, or for a positive review;
• it contains no confidential or privileged information, personal information about other people, threats, hate, profanity, or statements you know to be false.

You may leave one review per lawyer, and you must confirm your email address before it is considered. Every review is moderated before it is published, and we may refuse, edit for format or remove reviews that break these rules. We do not check that the facts in a review are true, and reviews are the opinions of their authors, not of Synmek.

Lawyers and firms may not post reviews of themselves, ask for reviews in exchange for anything of value, or ask only satisfied clients to review them in a way that misleads readers. A lawyer cannot pay to remove or hide a review. If you believe a review is false or breaks these terms, contact us at hello@lawyerslist.ca and we will look at it.

• When you contact a lawyer through LawyersList, your name, contact details and message are sent to that lawyer, and stored so they can read it in their dashboard.
• Do not include confidential or sensitive details of your legal matter in a first message. Until a lawyer agrees to act for you, what you send may not be protected by solicitor–client privilege, and the lawyer may first need to check for conflicts of interest.
• We do not guarantee that a lawyer will reply, take your matter or be available. Lawyers decide for themselves whether to respond.
• Lawyers must use messages only to respond to the person about their enquiry, in line with their professional obligations, and not add senders to marketing lists without consent.
• We may filter messages for spam and abuse, and block senders who misuse the contact form.

Listing on LawyersList is free. Optional paid plans (currently Professional, Premium and Elite, for individual lawyers and as per-seat firm plans) add features described on our pricing page. Paid plans are for lawyers and law firms buying for their practice.

• Seller and payments. Paid plans are sold and billed by Synmek. Payments are processed by Stripe, and charges appear on your statement under a Synmek or LawyersList descriptor. We never receive or store your full card number.
• Prices and taxes. Prices are in Canadian dollars and do not include applicable taxes (GST/HST, QST or PST), which are added where required. Firm plans are priced per seat, with volume discounts shown on the pricing page.
• Automatic renewal. Plans renew automatically at the end of each monthly or yearly billing period, and we charge your payment method on file until you cancel. We email yearly subscribers a reminder before each renewal.
• Changes. You can upgrade, downgrade, switch between monthly and yearly, or (for firms) change the number of seats in the billing portal. Changes take effect straight away, and Stripe adds a prorated charge or credit for the rest of the current period.
• Cancellation. You can cancel at any time in the billing portal. Your plan stays active until the end of the period you have paid for, then your listing returns to the free plan. Your listing stays on LawyersList.
• Refunds. Except where the law requires otherwise, payments are non-refundable and we do not give refunds or credits for unused parts of a billing period. If you think you have been charged in error, contact hello@lawyerslist.ca within 60 days and we will look into it.
• Failed payments. If a payment fails, we will try again over about two weeks and email you so you can update your card. Paid features stay on during that time. If every attempt fails, the plan is cancelled and the listing returns to the free plan.
• Disputes and chargebacks. Please contact us before disputing a charge with your bank. If a payment is disputed, we may cancel the plan straight away while the dispute is resolved.
• Price changes. We may change our prices. We will tell existing subscribers by email at least 30 days before a new price applies to them, and it will start at your next renewal after that notice. You can cancel before then if you do not want to continue.
• Complimentary plans and promotions. We may offer free or discounted plans for a set time. When that time ends, the listing returns to the free plan unless you start a paid plan. We may end a complimentary plan early if these terms are breached.

We want you to understand why you see the lawyers you do. Search and directory results are first filtered by what you searched for, such as location, practice area and language. Within those results, the order considers:

• the listing's plan (paid plans rank higher);
• how complete the profile is;
• ratings and the number of reviews;
• whether the listing is verified.

You can re-sort results yourself, for example by rating.

Some places at the top of results are sponsored: paid advertising available to certain plans. They are always labelled “Sponsored” and rotate among eligible subscribers. Paying for a plan never affects reviews, ratings or verification.

We do not guarantee any particular position, number of views, messages, clients or other results from a listing or a paid plan.

You agree not to:

• copy, scrape, crawl or harvest listings, contact details or reviews by automated means, or build a competing database from LawyersList, except as allowed by our robots.txt for search engines;
• use contact details or the contact form to send unsolicited marketing, or in breach of Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL);
• impersonate anyone, misrepresent your relationship with a lawyer or firm, or claim a listing you are not authorised to manage;
• post false, misleading, defamatory, hateful, harassing, obscene or illegal content, or fake or incentivised reviews;
• upload malware, probe or test our systems for vulnerabilities without permission, or interfere with how LawyersList works;
• get around a limit, lock or suspension we have applied, or reverse engineer the service;
• use LawyersList in a way that breaks any law, or any professional rule that applies to you.

We send emails you need in order to use LawyersList, such as sign-in codes, security notices, messages from visitors, review and verification updates, receipts and billing notices. These are part of the service, and you cannot opt out of them while you have an account or a listing you manage.

With your consent, or where CASL otherwise allows, we may also send optional emails such as profile tips, reports, weekly summaries and our newsletter. Every optional email has an unsubscribe link, and you can change your choices at any time in your email settings.

LawyersList, its software, design, logos, badge artwork, text we write and the way the directory is compiled belong to Synmek or its licensors and are protected by law. Apart from your content, these terms do not give you any rights in them.

While you hold a verified listing, you may display our verification badge on your own website, exactly as we provide it and linking to your profile. You may not change the badge, or use our name or logos in a way that suggests we endorse you.

LawyersList relies on, and links to, services we do not control. These include Stripe for payments, Google for sign-in and, where a lawyer links their Google Business Profile, Google reviews, as well as lawyers' and firms' own websites. Your use of those services is governed by their terms and privacy policies. We are not responsible for their content or practices.

We are always improving LawyersList, and we may add, change or remove features. If we make a change that materially reduces the features of a paid plan you are subscribed to, we will tell you in advance. You may cancel and, where the law requires it, receive a prorated refund for the time left on your plan.

By you. You can stop using LawyersList at any time. You can delete your account from your account settings once any paid plan has ended.

When you delete your account, your lawyer listing is unpublished and kept as an unclaimed listing so that it can be claimed again. Firm pages you own become unowned. Ask us at hello@lawyerslist.ca if you want a listing removed completely.

By us. We may suspend or end your access, unpublish listings or cancel a plan if:

• you breach these terms or a professional rule;
• we must do so by law or at the request of a regulator;
• your use creates risk or harm for other users, the public or us; or
• we stop offering LawyersList.

Where reasonable, we will give notice and a chance to fix the problem first. If we end a paid plan for reasons other than your breach, we will refund the unused part of your current billing period.

Sections that by their nature should continue after termination, such as content licences for content already shared, disclaimers, limits of liability, indemnity and governing law, will continue to apply.

LawyersList is provided “as is” and “as available”. Listing content, reviews and messages come from lawyers, firms, users and public sources, not from us. We do not guarantee that information on LawyersList is accurate, complete or current, or that the service will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Synmek disclaims all warranties and conditions, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. We are not responsible for the advice, services, fees or conduct of any lawyer or firm you find through LawyersList.

To the fullest extent permitted by law:

• Synmek and its directors, employees and contractors will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages. This includes lost profits, revenue, clients, data or goodwill, and any loss arising from a lawyer's services or a decision you made based on LawyersList.
• Our total liability for all claims relating to LawyersList or these terms is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim, and (b) CA$100.

Some laws, including consumer protection laws in Québec and other provinces, do not allow some of these exclusions or limits. Where that is the case, they apply only as far as the law allows, and nothing in these terms limits rights you have that cannot be waived.

If you are a listing owner or a firm, you agree to indemnify Synmek against claims, losses and reasonable costs (including legal fees) that arise from your content, your listing or firm page, your breach of these terms or of any professional rule, or your dealings with clients or prospective clients.

We may update these terms from time to time. We will post the new version here with a new effective date. If a change materially affects account holders or subscribers, we will email you at least 30 days before it takes effect. Continuing to use LawyersList after that date means you accept the updated terms. If you do not agree, you can cancel your plan and delete your account before then.

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada that apply there. Before starting a formal claim, please contact us at hello@lawyerslist.ca so we can try to resolve the issue informally. Any dispute that is not resolved will be heard by the courts of Ontario, sitting in Toronto, and you and we agree to their jurisdiction.

If you are a consumer, nothing in this section removes your right to bring a claim in the courts of the province where you live, or any other right the consumer protection law of that province gives you.

• These terms, our Privacy Policy and any plan details shown when you buy are the entire agreement between you and us about LawyersList.
• If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect.
• If we do not enforce a right straight away, we have not given it up.
• You may not transfer your rights under these terms without our written consent. We may transfer them to an affiliate, or as part of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets.
• We are not responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control.
• Headings are for convenience only. “Including” means “including without limitation”.

Questions about these terms? Email hello@lawyerslist.ca. Mail: Synmek, 100 King St West. Suite 5600 Toronto, ON M5X 2A1.