Pulat Yunusov

2Hi, Neha.

4I'm in Toronto. I'm always in Toronto. I'm probably in Toronto 99.99% of the time, especially this year. And I'm in my sun-drenched office here. And I'm in a luxurious situation, I think, compared to many people, because many people are stuck at home, and I have the luxury of going away from home every day and sitting in my lair here, where only my things are, except, you know, I think there is my daughter's book is here. Sometimes I bring her to the office.

6I call myself commercial, commercial litigator. So I think it's a branch of civil litigation where you focus on commercial disputes, you focus on transactions that went wrong, you focus on insolvency, you focus on debts, you focus on all kinds of things that can go wrong about transactions or property, or sometimes a professional relationship. So I do a bit of professional negligence as well.

8Let me remember, try to remember. Was a very long time ago. I came to Canada This year will be the 21st anniversary of my arrival to Canada, and before Canada, I have to say, I think it's material, I lived in the United States for 2 years. So I came to North America in 1998.

10Yes, I drove into Toronto on Gardiner, and I wasn't impressed. In 2000, when you were driving from Niagara Falls into Toronto on Gardiner, you wouldn't be impressed. They had none of the glass towers, nothing like that. It was very gray, industrial looking at the time.

12No, I had no idea. I didn't think I would be a lawyer at that time. I was really interested in computer programming and I was hoping to be a computer programmer to work in technology and IT. So no idea that I would be a lawyer. Had zero idea, zero plan.

14You know, I applied to 3 law schools in 2006. I applied to U of T, Osgoode, and McGill. McGill accepted me on condition that I take summer French classes, and I said, well, I'll think about it, because another condition was moving to Montreal, obviously, right? At the time, I was already married. My wife had a job here. Osgoode accepted me unconditionally, and U of T was holding out, didn't send me any response to my application for a while. So finally I walked into the U of T admissions office and I said, what's going on? Just give me the answer. Osgoode already admitted me. And as soon as I said that, I think the next day they sent me the letter saying no.

15So my theory is they thought, okay, this guy already has a spot, so we're going to give this spot to somebody else, right? So, or maybe I wasn't good enough, you know, it's U of T, right? Who knows? So I'm I'm going to be as impartial as possible about myself here. But Osgoode admitted me. Why did I end up going to law school? Well, I guess I wanted— I like the sound of my voice. And I didn't get to hear my voice enough when I worked as a computer programmer. I worked as a computer programmer for years before. I did start working as a computer programmer after I came to Canada, and I worked as a computer programmer for years before going to law school, but I liked the sound of my voice so much, and I never really got to hear my voice when I was a computer programmer, and I never really got to see any admiring audiences listening to my speeches and submissions.

16Not that I see them now. It's very rare that somebody admires when I make— admires my submissions, very rare. But yeah, I guess it was— I was really young, it was many years ago, it was what, 14, 15 years ago, right? And I just thought, okay, I'm gonna try that because it sounds like fun, it sounds like lawyers have influence in the society. And I was somehow interested in this concept of influence. I wanted to have influence. I wanted to have a say in Canada. And I wasn't a big believer in political participation because I thought, I'm going to be one of 30 million people, right? It's not too much influence. So if, as a lawyer, I can directly influence specific cases, right?

17So I think that was my reasoning, and that's how I ended up applying to law school.

19I think I was about 10 years older than the average age of students in my Osgoode class, I didn't really feel that difference because I didn't have kids at the time. I don't think you're really mature until you have kids. So it was good, it was okay. I mean, I had more life experience than most around me, but I didn't really get to show that off because nobody was interested in me. Right? So I was interested in other people, but very few people showed interest in me. People mostly showed interest interest in their computer screens and summaries and things like that. And I wasn't really a big bar, pub, going out type because of the marriage, right?

20So you have to spend time with your spouse. That's my advice to all people who are married. You have to spend time, pay attention to your spouse.

22No. No legal advice. No legal advice. And I also, I don't practice family law. So, but the thing about Osgoode though, there were a lot of really nice people in my class who eventually started paying attention to me and we became friends.

24Because I think that's one of the few upsides about being in law school for 3 years. I generally don't think it's a good idea, the length of time it takes to get a law degree. But that was the upside. You're with these people for so long, eventually you figure each other out and you become friends, right? Even with a goof like me. So, and that eventually became one of the biggest sources of support for me as a lawyer. All the friends like you and like others, you can find many of them on the list of guests of my YouTube show. And over the years, we kept in touch. Over the years, you know, we went out to have lunches together, we talked.

25And I learned a lot from them over the years because they were exposed to different firms. I was exposed to Yunusov Law Professional Corporation most of the time, right? And they were exposed to a bunch of different firms, and I learned a lot from them. I followed them, and they referred work to me also. So that was amazing when it started happening. I realized that People are great, you know, and people are really the most important thing in one's life because they support life, they support work, they support you. So treasure people.

27I articled at a small wrongful dismissal litigation firm. It was very hands-on. I had a lot of practical experience. So that helped me hit the ground running when I started my own practice right after my call to the bar.

29Yes, pretty much.

31after,

33I didn't have any book of business. I didn't have any client list. I started very, very slow. So it was a minimum viable law practice, if I can borrow the startup terminology. I thought, first I thought I'm going to look for jobs, but then I realized I have a license to practice law. It's real, it's real. I just spent 3 years and thousands upon thousands of dollars to get that license to practice law. So why don't I use that license a little bit? All I need to do is to get one client and to get LawPRO coverage. So the biggest obstacle to practicing law on your own at the time was the cost of the license and the cost of the insurance premium.

34But if you can, if you can take care of that, There is nothing that can stop you if you are not going to bite more than you can chew.

36And by that, I mean, if you take a complex Superior Court case where large sums of money are at stake, you might be biting more than you can chew in your first, second year of practice. But the beautiful thing about clients is that they generally don't want the first, second year lawyer take a million dollar Superior Court case. So they will probably not end up and land on your lap, those cases. But what will drop in your lap, and literally it will be like fruit dropping from trees, small claims. And I'm talking about only civil litigation right now. I've had almost zero experience with criminal litigation in my entire law school experience or career.

37Small claims is a wonderful arena and forum for serving clients and getting trial experience. It's incredible. And the stakes are, by definition, low. Relatively low, right? They may be very high for your specific client, but I'm talking in terms of concern that law firm may have about this. So definitely small claims and also landlord and tenant tribunal. At the time, I remember the first couple years of my law practice was trials. I just did trials, landlord and tenant trials, small claims trials. I know it's— the trial experience is laughably small compared to any criminal lawyer's trial experience, I mean, any decent criminal lawyer would do probably a trial a week or something, I hear.

38But then I also distinguish criminal trials, most criminal trials, from civil trials because I understand that in many criminal trials, there is a very distinct factual issue that is being tried. Did you touch that person with your body or not? In commercial trials, usually there is a complex matrix with a long history going back and thousands of documents. So this is a very different trial experience, although the skills are transferable. Cross-examination is cross-examination. So the first few years was trials, and that really set me on the course to practicing successfully, practicing civil commercial litigation successfully, because I have a trial-first approach.

40That's a great question. I'm actually on a Law Society panel, I think this May, where we're going to discuss making your practice tech-friendly. So I look forward to that panel. I've been digital, and my practice has been digital and paperless since day one. I didn't have a choice because I couldn't afford a lease. If you can't afford a lease, you have no choice but become paperless. And I, I know that this is why 20 years ago people didn't really start their practices. Many people couldn't start their practice right out of articling because they didn't have the digital tools at the time. Even when I started, the digital tools were not as powerful as now, and the courts were completely paper-based.

41We had a revolution in the courts, and it is really impossible to underestimate the magnitude of this revolution in the Superior Court of Justice in several cases. If the courts, the Supreme Court, if the Superior Court was electronic as it is now when I started, it would probably be a huge difference, probably make a huge difference to me. It would probably speed up my progress a lot because at the time, and for the first, I would say, 9 years of my practice, the workflow that I had was digital, but it necessarily had a physical component because of paper filing. However, I was still able to control the physical component from any location digitally. And the way this worked is I would compose my materials, the court documents that I needed to serve and file, entirely digitally as PDFs.

42And then I would have a relationship with an excellent print shop where I would send those materials as PDFs with detailed instructions. That was a legal print shop. So they worked with lawyers and they would print, bind, tab, you know, all the accessories of our paper materials were there, the right color back sheets and everything. And they knew that, they knew how to do it. And then I would also send instructions to my process server who would go to the print shop, not to me, go to the print shop, pick up the materials and then serve the materials and then prepare an affidavit of service and file the materials in court. And I can run that workflow from anywhere in the world.

43Like, occasionally I would spend a month— way before COVID years before COVID— I would go to California and spend the month and just, you know, send those instructions from some place in the Bay Area or LA or some— or Florida was another favorite. I would just rest there and manage those people here in Toronto. So yeah, definitely helped. And I set up an infrastructure at the time that kept me afloat when COVID hit. I was ready.

45Exactly.

47No, no. So that's an important amendment that I have to make to my speech about paperless and digital office. I used to be 100% digital and untethered to any physical space. I used to be, but then a few years ago, I realized that I needed some kind of home because the files were becoming more complex and dramatically more complex. And very simply, I needed more screen space than just my laptop. When a file is complex enough, I mean, I can do it on a laptop if I have to do it as an emergency at home real quick, right? But on a regular basis every day, I can just do so much better if I have more screen space.

48And then you immediately think dual monitors or large monitors. And once you have large monitors and dual monitors, you're tethered. I mean, no coffee shop can do that. At home, it's just not good to have dual monitors at home, in my opinion. Unless you have like a separate office space at home, like in the basement or something. And I just started looking for space, I found space, and it's a beautiful office, it's completely private, I have all my things here, my files, I do occasionally have paper or physical objects, for example, sworn affidavits, but this now is is really less and less relevant every day. It's really legacy things that I have because sworn affidavits don't need to exist in paper form anymore after Ontario government made— amended the legislation related to this.

49So everything is digital. This is unheard of. I can tell you one of the biggest sticks that the system would would put in my wheel, in my digital wheel, was when court staff required original signatures in motion records. That was, that was, first of all, if you read the rules of civil procedure, it says the motion record must contain copies of affidavits, right? That's, well, I'm not criticizing anyone. I'm just saying this is the way things were, and it means that my client had to sign the affidavit, not necessarily in front of me, but in front of another commissioner. It's not necessary to use your lawyer of record as a commissioner. And I would have to get that signed affidavit to that print shop, and then I would have to include things in the instructions.

50I would have to include the instruction to insert the original affidavit in there, in the materials that they were printing. That was the reality. So that was just another layer of complexity one more courier, one more person involved in the workflow. The more people you have involved in the process, the higher is the possibility of error. At the end of the day, I had to review everything.

52So that was causing additional delay and significantly extra costs for clients, significantly extra costs. Just to serve and file something would probably cost $300 or $500 sometimes, right? And that's unbelievable. Right now it costs $0. Because it's by email. I mean, apart from legal fees, but the service itself, I'm just emailing things, right? Or my the other lawyer I worked with emailed things.

54Absolutely.

56Well, partly, yes. So partly, yes. And partly it's also because a human being needs to move. A human being needs to— needs a change of scenery. I'm convinced that a human being needs a change of scenery. It's a mental health issue. You need a change of scenery. If you are stuck in the same room or in the same house 24/7, this is dangerously close to imprisonment. And I, by no means, I'm purporting here to compare our comfortable homes with the conditions that people are imprisoned in here in Ontario, for example. But the effect on mental health is there, is there. And I just read an article somewhere today that we need to measure that.

57We need to actually measure the other side of the lockdown. Yes, we prevented a bunch of illness, but what is the mental health effect of the lockdown? Not taking any position, I'm just saying this is a live issue.

59It's hard to be a dad. It's hard to be a mom. And it's, I think, also a great way to be a human being. There are other ways to be a human being. You don't have to have children to be a human being, but I think one of the greatest ways to be a human being is to have children. So I don't know why people have children. I don't want to speculate about it right now. The fact is that I have children. I love my children. And I have to take care of their needs as well as my clients' needs. I owe a statutory duty to my clients, and I owe a statutory duty to my children.

60Has any parent thought about that? It's just that, just to bring a little legal perspective into this— no legal advice, I mean, go, you know, do your own research, basically is what I tell people. Do your own diligence.

62Yeah, exactly. This is my 9th year of my statutory duty. I haven't yet discharged it.

64Exactly, it's 9 years to the termination of this duty. But I mean, we usually have good reasons for laws. I mean, generally our laws are reasonable and they have some foundation in real life. And I think I'm thankful for my clients that completely understand that lawyers are human beings and that they also owe duties to other clients or to other parties that are not necessarily clients. Nobody has— no client has tried to hog all of my time or attention. The way I structure my work is mostly to prevent emergencies. I think the biggest source of trouble in law practice, the biggest source of mistakes in law practice, the biggest source— one of the biggest sources of frustration in law practice is emergencies, especially litigation.

65And I've practiced law for this— this July or June, it will be 10 years that I have practiced law. And from the relative height of my 10 years of experience, I can say almost all emergencies are preventable. And they're not only preventable by doing something after you get the file. They're also preventable by doing something before you get the file, by screening your potential files, by choosing your clients. Indiscriminate accepting of files will result in emergencies. You can, you can trust me on that. No matter how careful you are, no matter how well you plan. I mean, at the screening point, you have to screen your file for the potential to generate emergencies. And I'm not going to get into the kinds of emergencies that are possible.

66If you are a lawyer for any amount of time, you will know what I'm talking about. So if, if your goal, however, is, is volume, is just sales, right, fees Sure. I mean, you will have to have staff, though, significant staff. You will have to have significant infrastructure to support almost constant emergencies that will arise. So big firms, they are maybe more positioned or better positioned to deal with that. I don't know much about big firms, however. I was never on the inside. I always assess big firms from the outside as opposing counsel or as a friend or as a colleague, right, who hears about the big firm life. But they just have more capacity or more resources by definition.

67So it may be less relevant to them. But for small firms and for solo practitioners, I think preventing emergencies is good for you and it's also good for the justice system, for the administration of justice. Our justice system doesn't appreciate emergencies, and it's not well designed to handle emergencies either. So you will be serving the justice system and the interest of justice by preventing emergencies, is my point.

69My biggest interest in technology is not a marketing interest. My biggest interest in technology is from the point of view of process improvement. I feel that will have marketing repercussions, though. So if I improve my process, I become a better law firm. I serve my clients better. That improves my reputation. That improves my public outcomes, the reported decisions. And by the way, there are no bad reported decisions unless the judge says that you're literally a bad lawyer in the reported decision, right? So the process improvement is my biggest interest. Marketing, using technology to market, is not really my big interest because I don't do volume really. I prefer to have fewer high-value files. I used to advertise.

70I don't advertise anymore. I prefer content as a marketing vehicle. So process improvement is my number one interest in applying technology to law practice.

72I see myself with a lot more trials behind my belt. I see myself with a lot more reported decisions. I see myself with even more calm confidence than I have already have now. And I see myself meet and serve even more amazing clients that teach me. As much as I help them.

74Thank you, Neha.