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Executive Legal Assistant

Barbarian Law is a boutique transactional firm in Aurora, Ontario, practising real estate, corporate and commercial law, and wills and estate planning across the Greater Toronto Area. Fees are published in advance, engagements are scoped to a specific matter, and clients are invoiced after the work is delivered.

We are looking for an Executive Legal Assistant to join a small, growing team. The role is unusual in that it operates as the left hand of the Founder and Managing Partner, which means it needs someone who takes initiative and stays flexible — the brief is genuinely wide.

What you would do

• Manage the front office: screen calls and email, take messages, and respond to queries
• Provide administrative and legal support, and cover for law clerks as needed
• Draft, edit, proofread and prepare legal documents and correspondence
• Communicate with clients and opposing counsel
• Prioritise competing deadlines, move matters forward proactively, and follow through to completion
• Research and triage incoming issues, including confidential ones, and determine the course of action
• Coordinate meetings and appointments, and make sure the agenda and briefing materials are ready
• Maintain electronic and physical files, including opening and closing matters
• Act within scope of authority during the principal's absences, and route what needs routing
• Support special projects, including occasional internal and external events
• Act as follow-up manager on new contacts, commitments and initiatives

What we are looking for

• Background work experience in law
• Education in law is an asset; a willingness to learn the underlying theory is required
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Detail-oriented, working to a high standard of accuracy
• Highly organised and flexible, able to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced professional environment
• Self-directed, able to complete projects with limited supervision
• Analytical, able to research and summarise
• Advanced working knowledge of the Microsoft Office suite

What we offer

• $25 per hour, in a pay-for-performance environment with incentive on top
• Real opportunities for professional growth as the firm grows
• A hybrid environment combining in-office collaboration with remote work
• Flexible weekly hours where needed
• Competitive time off — vacation requests are always granted
• A young team and a firm still small enough that what you do visibly matters

How the student program works

One program, three tracks: Legal, Operations and Growth. All are unpaid student placements, and all run on the terms below. Applications are read on a rolling basis; placements begin with the school term — September, January or May — so they line up with co-op and placement credit.

Most student placements at small firms are shaped by whatever happened to land that week. These are structured: everyone starts together, everyone is trained before being handed anything, and the same principal supervises all of it.

Every term includes

• A weekly log and a short weekly check-in with the founder
• At least one finished piece of work you own — published, filed or used — and usually more
• Mid-term and final evaluations
• A written reference at the end, where the work merits one

These are unpaid placements, and the page says so plainly rather than making you ask. If your college or university runs an approved placement or co-op program, say so in your application — those programs have their own requirements and it is easier to satisfy them from the start than to retrofit them later.

Every lane the firm runs

The point of a boutique transactional practice is breadth. Every student sees all of it — which is the part large-firm students spend three years waiting for.

This is not a first attempt

Plenty of small firms advertise a placement and then hand the student a filing cabinet. It is a fair thing to be suspicious of, so here is the record instead of a promise.

What previous students actually got

Not a wish list. This is what placements here have consisted of:

• Training across every practice area the firm runs, deliberately varied rather than parked on one desk
• Sitting in on client meetings and attending real estate closings
• Administrative and office support on live files, alongside the lawyer running them
• Writing for the firm — blog articles published under the student's own byline
• Marketing, design work and video production, in one case as the main body of the placement
• Mid-term and final evaluations, weekly logs, and a written reference at the end

To be plain about the boundary: the legal work is done by the lawyer. Students are taught how a file moves, watch it happen, and support it — they are not handed legal work to produce. That is the correct arrangement, and it is also the one that teaches you the most.

Where they went next

Former Barbarian Law students have gone on to open their own law firms, practise as associates at other firms, clerk at the Tax Court of Canada, study law in the United Kingdom, succeed in the Toronto second-year recruit, and take roles in the federal public sector.

Several have come back years later asking for a reference, and received one. The firm has written references repeatedly for the same person — in one case three times across three different years, for three different applications.

That last part matters more than it sounds. A placement is ultimately worth what it is worth to the next person who asks about you.

Legal Track

For JD and LLB students, and university students who are heading to law school. The firm cares considerably more about whether you are useful and want to be here than about how far along a credential you happen to be. Plenty of good lawyers started by answering a phone in an office like this one.

Places are few, so each person gets real files rather than a research queue. What you are given scales to what you can handle, not to what your enrolment letter says.

What you would actually do

• Be taught how each kind of file works — a purchase, an incorporation, a lease, an estate — and what has to happen in what order
• Sit in on client meetings and attend real estate closings
• Support live files: organising documents, tracking dates and deadlines, and keeping the office moving
• Learn what the documents are for, why a clause is worded the way it is, and where deals go wrong
• Write for the firm — explainers, checklists, and articles published under your own byline
• Ask questions in the room, while the thing you are asking about is actually happening

The legal work itself is done by the lawyer — that is the rule, and it does not bend for a keen student. What you get instead is the part nobody can teach you from a textbook: watching a transactional practice run at close range, and understanding why it is built the way it is before you ever have to build one yourself.

Operations Track

For law clerk, paralegal, legal administration and accounting students. Operations is everything that keeps a law practice running: the files, the records, the closings, the books and the billing. In a small office all of it runs through the same few people, and you will be one of them.

Files, records and closings

• Prepare and organise real estate files — searches, closing documents and reporting letters — under the lawyer's supervision
• Maintain corporate records: minute books, registers and annual filings
• Open, manage and close files, and keep key dates and deadlines tracked
• Prepare for real estate closings, and attend them
• Support client intake and front-office communication

Bookkeeping, billing and collections

The firm publishes its fees, scopes every engagement in writing, and invoices after the work is delivered. That makes billing a real discipline here rather than an afterthought.

• Keep the firm's general books current: record income and expenses as they happen
• Prepare and send client invoices once the work is delivered
• Track what is outstanding and follow up on unpaid invoices
• Learn how a professional firm prices, bills and collects — and why it publishes its fees

The legal work itself is done by the lawyer, and trust accounting stays with the lawyer. You learn the business side of a law practice by running it alongside the person responsible for it.

Growth Track

For marketing, communications, media and business students. This firm markets itself by explaining things properly — published fees, long explainers on what a closing actually involves, and a blog that does the work most firms outsource to an agency that has never read a lease. The Growth track is for someone who wants to own a piece of that.

You do not need a marketing degree and you do not need to know any law. You need to be able to write a clear sentence, notice when something is boring, and finish things.

What you would actually do

• Turn legal explainers into short-form video, social posts, and newsletter copy
• Edit video — previous students have cut finished pieces for the firm end to end
• Write and edit blog material for publication under your own byline
• Build and run the firm's posting schedule across LinkedIn and short-form platforms
• Design simple visuals — diagrams, checklists, comparison tables — that make a legal point land
• Track what actually performs and say so honestly, including when something did not
• Sit in on client meetings and closings often enough to understand what you are writing about
• Help keep the firm's website and search presence current — page updates, client reviews, and what shows up on Google

This is not a new idea here. Previous students have done the firm's marketing and design work, shadowed client meetings, and one ran video production as the main part of their placement. You will be trained across the practice areas in your first two weeks alongside the other tracks — marketing a law firm without understanding the work produces exactly the content this firm is trying not to publish.

How to apply

Use the form on this page. It goes straight to the firm's founder — there is no applicant tracking system and no recruiter in between, and a person reads every submission.

Go to the application form. If you would rather email, karim@barbarianlaw.ca reaches the same person — put the role in the subject line. There is no deadline — applications are read on a rolling basis, and placements begin in September, January and May.

Every application gets a reply, including the unsuccessful ones. If you have not heard back within ten business days, follow up by email — it means it went to spam, not that you were ignored.

Questions

Barbarian Law® is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes applications from all qualified candidates. Accommodation is available on request at any stage of the hiring process — say so in your email and it will be arranged.