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Business Plan PRLG 5302 RNA Submitted to: Stephen Young Submitted by: Hushanpreet Kaur N01400805 Akwinder Kaur N01399730 Saurabh Arora N01404808

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Drake Graham Paralegal Firm Introduction

Drake Graham Paralegal Firm is a paralegal firm located in Downtown, Toronto that provides legal services in various areas of law. The firm is being established by paralegalPeter, Simon and Robert as a Partnership Firm. The firm will also employ other staff members for assistance and providing legal aid to the clients. The paralegal Peter was previously employed by D.J. Legal Services and has experience of over 17 years in providing legal services and paralegal Simon and Robert has experience of over 12 years & 5years in dealing with the small claims matters and provincial offences.

Areas of operation:Drake Graham Paralegal Firm will be dealing Ontario Court of Justice Provincial Offences Act matters, Ontario Court of Justice- Summary Conviction Offences, Workers’ Compensation, Small Claim Court matters, Property Tax Assessment, Statutory Accidental Benefits Schedule matters (SABS), Human Rights, Landlord and Tenant, ADR, other tribunals with hearing from tribunals and boards. Drake Paralegal Firm also represent parties before tribunals, boards established under an Act of the Legislature of Ontario or under the Act of Parliament, Dog Bites, Immigrationand other related matters.

Legal Status:Drake Paralegal Firm will operate as a Partnership firm consisting of three partners who will be equally contributing to the law firm and share the profits and losses

2 equally. This partnership firm will be registered with the Province of Ontario and commence its business as on December 01, 2020.

Aim and Objective:The aim of the paralegal firm is to provide pragmatic, solution-oriented and technically feasible advice to their clients and provide legal services. The sole focus will be on providing more practical and innovative legal solutions to the problems brought up by the clients. Highest level of professional ethics with an excellent and timely legal service will be provided to the clients.

Vision:The vision is to be leading paralegal firm by focusing towards the maximum customer satisfaction and aiming at quality services to them. An ambient environment while dealing with the clients and listening to their issues and focusing on integrity, mutual trust, efficiency and personal responsibility towards our clients.

Future Plans: Drake Paralegal Firm has plans for expanding its business and services and its operations to other locations as well so that we can attract more clients more different areas and establish our business and gain reputation in our field.

The clients will be provided with the information and advice necessary to make a well-informed decision. The clients will not only be provided with the advice, the aim is to educate them about the implications of their decisions. In order to ensure the quality of service, the firm will be constantly organising and conduction legal seminars and conferences to spread awareness in

3 the society of their legal rights. Each client is unique; hence the firm focuses on special approach by assisting each client individually.

Client and Market profile Drake legal services will be targeting the people living and working in GTA area and nearby locations. The clients will be employed in the communication, information technology, retail and wholesale businesses, warehouses, financial services, marketing and more. This legal firm will be targeting parking tickets and Arbitration and mediation matters. According to City of Toronto “Open Data Catalog”, 2.8million parking tickets were issued last year. Most common reason tickets in Toronto are Parking on Private Property and sometimes parking on the street without the permit. Secondly, 5.5percent of all the tickets were issued for the violation of “Parking exceeding the time limit of 3 Hours”

Most Tickets Got in City of Toronto Sr. No.

Locations

Number of Tickets Issued

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

2075 Bayview Ave. 20 Edward street 199 Richmond Street West 1265 Military Trail 3401 Dufferin St. 15 Marine Parade Dr. Laplante Ave. 103 The Queensway 150 Gerrard St. W.

8,235 6,320 4,060 3,713 3,468 3,045 2,862 2,747 2,565

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1000 Finch Ave. W.

2,536

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Moreover, as most of the business are located in Toronto area, issues arise between employer and employees. These businesses prefer to settle their disputes out of the court . They prefer to settle the issues through mediation and arbitration becausethis method is time efficient and less costly. According to Physical Year 2017 Report, 75 percent cases are resolved through voluntary ADR proceedings, whereas only 55percent cases are solved through court ordered. Thus, this shows the importance of resolving the disputes through ADR proceedings instead of court order proceedings.

Success Rate of ADR (Year) Category Year Voluntary ADR Proceedings

2017 75%

Court-Ordered Proceedings

55%

Percentage 2016 75%

70%

2015 71%

73%

Marketing Analysis Market size:The City of Toronto is one of the busy cities and it is one of the biggest markets in Canada with people coming from different cities to run their business. Due to the big market size with the enhanced opportunity of the business growth there are also a number of competitors in the market which are to be kept in mind while expanding our legal services. The

5 following are the paralegals working in the target market area who market and provide services to people in the City of Toronto and nearby areas. 

Harry Paralegal’s (Toronto)

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Nelson Legal Services (Scarborough)

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K.L. Legal Firm (Toronto)

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Robert & Sons Legal Firm (North York)

According to the Statistics, in the past few years 31,000 legal firms have been established in GTA region, due to which there has been rise in the competition among these firms. The major number of these firms have established their name in very less due to the high demand of legal services in this region. Establishing a new firm in Toronto is great opportunity for a legal firm to stand up and make its name. The data shows that most of the firms have grown at minimum rate of 65% which is considered as one of the best for a new firm to grow up in this competitive world. We are aiming at providing legal services to our clients in a better planned and efficient manner so that once a client takes our service remains our customer on a long run in this way, we will be able to maintain our clientage and build reputation in the market and boost our goodwill.

Potential Growth Rate: Due to the vast market size and area it is expected that in the coming few years our legal firm will be able to cover many more locations and provide legal services among them with the growing rate of almost 60-85% approximately which is very good for a new firm. In the First year we might be having issues with covering our expenses but with the passage of time we will be able to cover and expand our business quickly. As per the data provided in the research conducted on the market growth rate it is expected that, the business

6 will explore and grow at a pace as compared to any other location. Among the 31,000 new firms established in the past few years almost 60 percent of the firms has hit the market and gain profits at a rate of 75% profitability and established their name.

Marketing Plan:Drake Paralegal Services will provide services in matter related to parking tickets and will also provide services in ADR and mediation. As Canada is a diverse country, people belonging to different countries reside here who speak different languages therefore to assist them, our firm provides services in seven languages including English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Punjabi, Chinese which will attract more clients and set us apart from other firms. Our legal firm represents the clients before administrative tribunals, boards agencies, where the administrative decisions made by the government are in question. The main areas of legal services provided by our firm are Ontario Court of Justice Provincial Offences Act matters, Ontario Court of Justice- Summary Conviction Offences, Workers’ Compensation, Small Claim Court matters, Property Tax Assessment, Statutory Accidental Benefits Schedule matters (SABS), Human Rights, Landlord and Tenant, ADR, other tribunals with hearing from tribunals and boards. Drake Paralegal Firm also represent parties before tribunals, boards established under an Act of the Legislature of Ontario or under the Act of Parliament, such as the Financial Services Tribunal, the Ontario Labour Relations Board, Licensing Appeals and Standards Tribunals Ontario.

Setting Apart

7 In today’s era the legal industry is one of the most competitive field. So, it is very important for our firm to be distinctive from other firms to attract more customers in order to survive in this industry full of competitors. Drake Paralegal Services not only provide legal services to their clients but they also run in a smarter to run their business to achieve success. Our firm inherits certain features which makes us distinctive and attractive as compared to other firms. These features are:

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An attractive website: Our firm has an appealing website which is made by a professional web designer which is very attractive to catch the attention of the visitor’s. The website not only provides the contact information but also provides a depth details of various fields of legal services along with their description to assist the visitor’s.

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Virtual Seminar’s & Webinar’s: Keeping in view the current situation of the high number of cases of COVID-19, our firm organises virtual seminar’s and webinars in order to assist people and spread awareness. Moreover, our firm also limited the in-person services and moved to phone and zoom calls session for meeting and sorting out the problems faced by the client’s.

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Offering More Options: Drake Paralegal Firm provides their clients with a number of options and way out to deal with the problems instead of providing a single opinion, our clients have a numerous of best analysed solutions to choose the best one according to their needs. Additionally, we also tell the customers about the consequences of the decisions and its impact.

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Making things simple: We provide our clients with simple and best solutions. It is very common that many people get confused with the legal language and its provision, to tackle this issue and make the things simple for our clients, we explain our clients the issues faced by them in common language in details to make them understand the whole thing easily. Many more things are kept in mind so that our customers do not face any problem in any place by assisting them in making online payments and booking an early appointment on our website and more.

Advertising Drake Paralegal Firm will advertise its firm through various means such as Internet, Hoarding and by conducting online seminar and webinars. Keeping in mind the present situation we will focus on advertising through online webinar’s as it is not possible to advertise in-persons and through other modes. Our firm website also provides a feedback form to our clients which is visible to all our visitor’s and they can look how effective is our legal services provided to our clients which is an effective way to attract more new clients who visit our website. We will be constantly organising webinars and virtual seminars so that we can catch the eyes of more and more people. Normally, to organise a seminar it would include the expenses of renting a place for gathering and making other arrangements which would almost have an expense of $22,500 to $30,000, but in current situation due to Covid-19 we are organising the seminars online instead of in-person we are saving good amount of money and investing this money on other

9 modes of promoting our firm through newspaper, hoardings, social media, pamphlets and more. The initial budget setup for the promotion and advertisement of our firm for promoting on social media, newspaper, radio, other effective modes will be around $10,000

Advantages of the Location: 

All the big businesses and companies are situated and run in the GTA which will be convenient for us to attract many clients from these companies who have to deal with number issues due to their large and big networking and dealings and they can easily approach us due to the location.



Moreover, the people residing and working in the GTA are well educated and well settled in their businesses. Hence, they can afford the legal services easily.

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The clients can travel to the office through various modes of transportation such as buses, transits, subways, cabs and can easily reach our office without any hassle.

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As there are more shopping complex and condominiums located in Toronto. So, it is obvious that there are chances of violation of parking law because parking in the downtown, Toronto is more expensive and sometimes people would prefer to park on the streets which led them for violation of parking laws. Our firm has speciality in dealing with the parking infractions so we would attract more clients.

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Economy:The City of Toronto comprises of 11% of Canada’s GDP which matters a lot for a business to grow up.

Disadvantages of the location

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Expenses incurred: Toronto is one of the most expensive cities and renting an office in Toronto is not an easy job, it is way more expensive them other areas which leads to rise in expenses of the law firm. The cost of utilities is high in these cities.

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Competitive Environment: Due to numerous law firms in Toronto, it would be quite challenging to compete with these firms as they are well-known and reputative. So, to compete with a massive amount of competition, we have to make some extra efforts.

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Cost: Setting up cost for a law firm is more expensive in Toronto as compared to other firms.

Fees:The strategy for setting up the fees depends upon case to case and the situation. Drake Paralegal Firm does not charge all clients in a similar way but charges its clients according to the case. Our firm charges a flat fee for the cases which are settled or require less time and less visits. While the cases which are to be settled in a long run or needs more attention and cannot be resolved out or settled consuming more time are billed on hourly basis according to the time diverted towards the client’s case and sorting out the issues.

Budgeting/ Financial Plan :To start any business one needs to plan ahead and see all the things required in advance in order to establish a successful business. Starting up a business requires land, labour, capital, equipment’s and its promotion. In order to start up a legal firm one needs to incur expenses on space for office, office supplies, furniture, office equipment’s, stationary, office use computers, printers and many other.

Start Up Costs for Legal Business

11 Particulars/Items

Estimates Expenses/Costs (in CAD)

Leasing

$ 28,500

Insurance Office Supplies

$1,350 $5950

Advertising & Promotion

$10,000

Bank Fees for Account Handling and Usage

$1280

Furniture

$7,500

Office computer (printer, fax, telephone)

$1,250

Office Equipment’s

$2,500

Software’s(P.C Law, Accounting & securing

$1980

software’s) Office Rent

$7,500

Salaries

$25,500

Miscellaneous expenses

$5,500

Total

$98,810

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Operating Costs Items Rent Salaries Bank Charges Utilities Coffee vending machine, printing papers &

Costs $7,500 $25,500 $1200 $600 $350

other Insurance premium Internet Other expenses Total

$400 $250 850 $36,650

Our budget for first year will be around $135,460and the cost will be divided among three partners resulting into $45,153.3 per partner. Addition to this the firm’s start-up cost is approximately $98,810 and the monthly operating cost for the firm to be expected are around $36,650. For the initial starting months the firm might be putting the amount invested into the expenses so that it runs smoothly without any difficulties. The first few years for every firm are challenging and it requires a lot of patience and motivation along with financial assets to promote and grow a new business. It demands time and investment to build up reputation and market value for one’s business. Initially, the money is invested and other operating expenses are to be incurred by the proprietors to run and set up the base of the business to make the smooth flow of business and let the transactions run on the other hand without any issues.

Projected Cash Flow and other related transactions: A business account will be maintained by the partners so that all the transaction can be recorded and proper inflow

13 and outflow of the accounts will be recorded by the accountant in the books so, that there can be transparency in the transactions and the partners can easily see what are the liabilities and assets....