Neha Chugh

2I'm so good, and I'm so happy to talk to you, and I'm so happy to connect with you after, what is it, 10 years, 11 years since we graduated?

4Amazing, so amazing.

6it's really a pivot point. I've been thinking about that since January of this year, and we're at a turning point really about what do we want to do, what do we want from our careers. Okay, now we're kind of established as lawyers, we know what we like to do, but what's next? So for the first 10 years, it's about, okay, I'm here, I'm a lawyer now, and then after 10 years, it's What's next? And so that's kind of an interesting conversation to have with yourself.

8No, I don't have a LinkedIn profile. And really, the extent of my social media is Twitter. I need to— I really do need to work on a LinkedIn profile, and my office runs my Facebook account, so I don't go on Facebook. But these are all the things that I used to do as a law student that I ran out of time for as a lawyer, but I should get back on LinkedIn, right?

10No, for the first 2 years I worked for a firm. I articled in Toronto and then in Ottawa for 2 years I worked for a firm, and then my husband's job took us out of town, out of province actually, and a lot of things changed for me, and I was I found myself, I guess, out of work and having to make a decision about what I wanted to do next. And so I broke out on my own in 2014. So in October of 2013, I had a baby, took some time, figured out what I wanted to do, and 2014, officially, I opened up my practice.

14right? Right at the bottom of the staircase. And right at

16all of the movers and shakers in that building would pass by my doors, and I would get so nervous when they would walk by. I would, I would sit up straight. I would pretend to be working really hard and not just staring out the window, and everyone would walk by and I would be so excited to make their, their, their company. But we started small, and honestly, it was a combination of happenstance and coincidences. So we— I started in that small office at the front And then a 3-room office became available at the back. I think it was a company that was going out of business and they wanted the cheaper office space at the front.

17So they came to me and said, "Will you switch?" And I was thinking, well, what am I gonna do with such a big office? But it would be nice to have the extra space. And so I jumped on it for an extra $50 a month. Just happenstance. And then I needed an assistant. I realized that I was missing calls. I was in court. I thought to myself, if I invest in an assistant, then maybe I'll be able to get home for the kids on time. Maybe I'll be able to really be able to focus on the law and not have to do all of this administrative work. And I'd be willing to take the pay cut and invest in an assistant.

18I missed the interview with the assistant that I had in mind, the person who applied, because I got stuck in court. So I told her to meet me at the courthouse where she sat outside the courtroom with her resume in hand. She handed me her resume and I said to her, it was a Thursday, and I said, "Can you start Monday?" And so that was just, again, coincidence, happenstance. She was forgiving of my time. She started with me. She occupied one of the rooms in the 3-room office. And then in terms of growth and people growth, I ran into someone at the courthouse and I liked the way he worked. And I thought to myself, I don't want him to be my competition.

19And I like him. And he needs to work with me and not against me. And so we have been dear friends since, and we just became business partners. And that, that is a business relationship that again, It just something came in my path and I followed my gut and my gut instinct on that. And then from there, I thought it's time maybe to start loosely looking for an office building to buy because we're putting a lot of money away into rent and working in a small town, the office buildings are not as expensive as perhaps a building in Ottawa or Toronto. So I just put it out there with some lawyer friends in Cornwall that I was looking, and someone came to me and said they had a client who was selling their office building and the price was right.

20Again, just coincidence. And then surprise, I have a brother who goes to law school and comes back and says, "I wanna work with you." So another lawyer joins our firm. And then it turned out that I had this growing family law practice and my passion is really criminal law. And I saw a young man working in family court in the duty counsel office, and I saw him running a motion and I knew his contract was coming up. And I went to him and I said, So what are your plans? Are you interested in joining our practice? Because again, I wanted him with me and not against me. And all of a sudden, we were 4 lawyers.

21And then a young woman dropped off her resume at my office, and the timing was right. Her timing was right. The family law practice was burgeoning. The criminal law practice needed help. And then we were 5 lawyers, and here we are with just coincidences and gut feelings and growth and investment and taking risks on people and believing in people, but also being a fun and engaging place to work. So that's, that's my story. And There's much, much, much to it, more to it. And I think that as self-deprecating as my blog was to Erin, Miss Cowling, I think that what I'm leaving out is a lot of heartaches and, you know, nights where I stayed up all night thinking, is my mortgage going to bounce tomorrow?

22Or I hope that I can pay my employees next week. You leave all of that out because at the end of the day it's all worked out and I've gotten to this point, but not without a lot of support and a lot of friendship from the people I work with.

24Yeah, I'm actually from a town called Guelph, which is about 45—

26Toronto. Yeah,

28Yes.

30Yes. And there

32Well, I, you know, I have told people about it. So what

34Yeah, not in this interview. So my practice is in a town called Cornwall, which is a town that is probably the first city just over the Quebec border on the 401. And it abuts with the American territory and with the reserve, the Mohawks of Akwesasne Sasmi, and is a wonderful francophone community. It— what brought me to Cornwall, if you told me when we were in law school, Pulat, if you told me that I was going to be opening up a practice in a town called Cornwall, Ontario, I would have said, where? What? Who? No, that's not a— I would have said that's not a place.

36Well, I don't think I had ever even been to Montreal in my life. I think the closest I had ever gotten to Cornwall was Ottawa. And the— what happened was I went to law school in Toronto, with you. Actually, no, in North York. We went to law school in North York, not Toronto, and articled in Toronto. And then my spouse he's an academic, he got a postdoc in Ottawa, and so we moved to Ottawa. I spent the first 2 years of my practice with a wonderful mentorship in a wonderful firm in Ottawa. And after that, after he was done his postdoc, we had a 2-year-old and I was also pregnant with our second, and he gave me the choice.

37He said, I have 2 academic positions that have been offered to me, one at the University of Manitoba and one at Concordia in Montreal. I'm going to let you decide because it's going to affect your job. And I'm pregnant with our second, with a common law Ontario law degree and don't speak a word of French. And I was like, what am I going to do in Montreal? So I looked at a map and I said, well, it looks like we can live on the western suburb of Montreal. You can commute in and I will commute the opposite way. So every morning we split We kiss each other on the cheek and we split. He goes one way and I go the other way.

38And then we meet back in the middle at the end of the day.

40Yes, 4 stories. Yes.

42We take up every corner of that building.

44Every corner either has a desk in it or a bookshelf.

46Yeah. I got that cat in law school and she's still kicking.

48that

50You're still kicking, you're still around.

52No, my plan was to be a criminal lawyer. And for the first 6 months of my practice, I didn't even bill a single account because I didn't know how. I was in a financial mess. I had no paperwork. I had nothing. I got my act together though, because I realized—

54I hired a bookkeeper who worked with me 24/7. To get my act together. So that first 6 months, I was I was a total mess. I was a total wreck. I had no plan. I was letting things just fall into place for me, which, you know, if you rely just on luck it's not always going to carry you. And so For example, I, in the first, the second year of my practice, I had a financial audit and the financial auditor came in and my bookkeepers were there with me. And the first day he was there, it was not pretty, even though I had bookkeepers working on it and I had two bookkeepers there, my assistant was there, we were all sitting at the boardroom table.

55With the auditor trying to get this organized, and still we had— he had to freeze everything and come back the next day and continue doing it. And but through that process, that very scary process, the following year when they attended, they said, "We have no complaints. This is perfect. This is great." And so A lot has been learned through mistakes and through teaching, through accident and through the heartache of having to go through that process. So no plan, relied on luck, relied on coincidence, realized the importance of a plan and the importance of planning, still don't have a 20-year plan.

57Yes, and it's the kind of work that we do, and it's— early on, I realized what my strength was, and my strength is working with clients and working with clients in need. And my strength is really working with mental health clients and working with families. And so my practice, I would say that my practice is about 70% legal aid. And there's always that goal to start doing less and less legal aid as the time goes on. But it is a skill set and a people set, skill set that I really enjoy working with and enjoy having. And so, yes, legal aid is a huge part of my practice, both family, criminal, and child protection.

59So my mantra or my way of looking at things is you never want to leave money on the table. And when you're leaving money on the table, that's when it's time to hire. So when I was missing phone calls or not able to attend to a client's needs, even if it's an unpaid need, an unpaid phone call an unpaid bail variation, a letter for a family law client that I might not be compensated for. It's still, that's still part of client management and client retention. And as soon as that was happening, because I knew that that work would mushroom into other work, as soon as that started happening, I realized that it was time to hire and It also is a balancing of keeping my spouse happy, because if it's 7 o'clock at night and I'm sitting at my computer writing that letter and the kids need homework help or the dishes need to be done, I have to keep the spouse happy, and that's when it's time to hire.

61No, Pulat, everything is perfect.

63No, OK, so money, taxes. But all of the money stuff and the taxes is what that comes down to is cash flow. And what cash flow comes down to are dockets and billing. And what dockets and billing come down to, and this is the scariest thing for me, is raising my voice, being assertive, and saying, where are your dockets from today? How come you didn't bill that file? And speaking to your employee outside of the friend zone and in the, I'm your manager and I have cash flow to manage in this business and I need you to meet my cash flow needs. That is the scariest part because the rest of it is just math and accounting and that will all fall into place if you can assert yourself and say, I need you to do the work that I expect you to do.

65So legal aid is a reliable source of income. Criminal lawyers and family lawyers will complain that the tariffs are not high enough and that the hourly rates are not high enough. For example, they'll give you 15 hours to do something and it will take 25 to 30 hours, and most lawyers will put in more hours. I think the adage is that for every billable hour you're doing one non-billable hour, is what I've heard many lawyers say. And so, but legal aid is a reliable source of billing. And if you get on the billing cycle, which is a 2 or 3 week, 2 or 3 week turnaround, then the cash flow will be there. So when you have a legal aid certificate, you know that you're going to get paid a certain amount for that file.

66And so it becomes a reliable stream of income. The high-volume aspect of it then gives you the amount of files and the amount of cash flow that you need in order to manage the payroll and the tax needs of your associates.

68So I am a huge believer in access to justice and ensuring that the playing field is equal. And one thing I want to say right at the outset is clients ask me, will I have a different level of service if I pay you cash? And no, I don't look at the retainer and determine what kind of service the person is going to get. It's a wide gamut of types of clients. Most of my clients are middle income, low to middle income, but don't qualify for legal aid because legal aid cutoffs are very low. And then we start talking about payment plans and we start talking about block fees And we really try and tailor our invoices or our bills, our block fees to meet the client's needs because we want to ensure that they have good representation and that access to justice is available for them.

69But we also want to make sure that we're getting paid, right? We are lawyers and we should get paid for our work.

71Oh, I wish I did. No, the truth of the matter is we don't, and we should. I know we should. And I know that that would be good for me, but we have so many clients that just need a voice on the other end of the phone, and we spend so much time doing that. And a lot of our time is spent on non-billable court work like remands, remand court or audio remand court, waiting in Zoom court, waiting in plea court for our turn.

73Exactly, exactly.

75No, they don't. That's a

77That's a really good job for an articling student. And that's where I started as an articling student was scheduling courts.

79No, no, I spend more time in Zoom court than I did in the remand court. I wish I spent less time. I spend less time commuting to work because I do it from home, but I spend more time in Zoom court, and we go by the Barristers Act in Cornwall, so I have to wait for my turn, and believe it or not, I'm quite young compared to my Aren't you being

81The problem is, is that all my colleagues are crossing their own thresholds too.

83Yes, and so I have to wait my turn. And so it's a long

85It can be a wait. And you know, there's a lot to be said about the time that you spend in the law library having a coffee there's a lot of work, unspoken work and unsaid work that happens in that time that you don't take account of or credit for connections that are made and contacts that are made.

87It's about 50,000.

89So the city of Cornwall has two surrounding satellite courts, I would say. So it's the counties of Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry. Dundas is Morrisburg, which is west, and Alexandria is Glengarry, which is east. So they have two satellite courts and we serve those three courts, but I still have work in Ottawa. I have— we're, as of March 1st, we've opened a satellite office in Hawkesbury. So in the very small town, it's called L'Orignal. Where the office is going to be. And well, as of March 1st, we are now open there. And Brockville, I do quite a bit of work in Brockville as well.

91So Brockville is 2 hours from home, so an hour and 45.

93Yeah, but it's, it's rural. Right. And so in the GTA, I remember I was driving everywhere— Brampton, Newmarket Oshawa— for courts. I think I spend less time on the road now than I did when I was articling.

95It is the most generous and accommodating and welcoming area I've ever lived in, with no disrespect to Guelph where I grew up and spent my teenage years. So thank you for having me there. I was a terrible teenager. And to North York where I went to school, to law school, and to Toronto where I articles. But I always thought that I was a city girl, but having the opportunity to work with people from rural community, the small town love is just amazing. What I've been able to do in Cornwall is to use my strengths as a social worker, so with my social work degree, We are in the midst of— I was going to say at the beginning of, but we are actually in the midst of an opioid crisis in the country.

96We are— we have issues with overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in custody. And I'm very, very blessed to have good relationships with the Akwesasne justice system, which is just next door. I, through my practice and through my skills as a social worker, was able to make good contacts and connections with the social workers in the area, so the youth social workers and the child protection workers, who were able then to see my strengths as a lawyer but also as a social worker, and then to give back to the community in that way. The region has, you know, just— you fall in love with the people, right? The people are so kind and so willing to help you, and I haven't looked back.

98As long as I can buy.

100You pick, I buy. You pick the restaurant, I buy.

102Okay,

104That better be a promise.

106Okay, good. Wonderful.

108Take care. Okay, bye.