The entrepreneur's
lawyer.
Most law firms are built to serve whoever pays the most per hour. I built mine around a specific kind of client: the person who just signed a lease for their first location, the founder wondering whether they need a shareholder agreement before their partner asks for one, the owner who's run a profitable company for fifteen years and is finally thinking about selling it. This is what that actually means in practice.
By Jonathan Kleiman, Barrister & Solicitor · Published August 2026
I call myself the entrepreneur's lawyer because that's genuinely who I work for, not because it sounds good on a homepage. This isn't a tagline. It's a description of how the practice is structured, priced and run, and it's worth explaining what that actually means, because "entrepreneur-focused" gets used loosely in this industry.
What makes a lawyer an "entrepreneur's lawyer"?
A practice built around the matters, budgets and pace of owner-operated businesses, not a big-firm service model scaled down. Big firms are built for big companies: in-house legal teams, standing outside counsel relationships, and budgets that absorb hourly billing without much friction. That model doesn't fit most entrepreneurs, and pretending otherwise is where a lot of small business owners get burned. Either they're priced out of getting help early, or they end up with a bill that doesn't match the size of the matter. Being an entrepreneur's lawyer means three things in how I actually practise:
- I work on the problems entrepreneurs actually have. Incorporation, shareholder agreements before a partnership goes sideways, contracts that hold up when a client doesn't pay, commercial leases, and buying or selling the business itself when the time comes. The business law services page covers the full range.
- I price in a way that makes sense for a small business. Flat and capped fees wherever the scope is predictable, so an owner can budget for legal work the same way they budget for accounting or insurance, rather than being afraid to call. My guide to what a business lawyer costs in Toronto lays out how legal pricing actually works and what to ask before you retain anyone.
- I explain things the way I'd want them explained to me. Plain language, real trade-offs, and a straight answer about what actually matters versus what's boilerplate. Not a memo full of hedges.
Do first-time founders and established owners need different legal help?
Yes, because the legal work changes dramatically with where the business is in its life, even though the lawyer shouldn't have to. Entrepreneurs aren't a single category. The founder registering their first corporation and the owner negotiating the sale of a company they built over twenty years have almost nothing in common, except that both are personally on the hook for getting it right:
- First-time founders who need to incorporate properly, put a shareholder agreement in place before problems start, and understand what they're personally exposed to even after incorporating.
- Established owners scaling up who are signing bigger contracts, hiring more staff, taking on commercial leases, and need agreements that actually protect them if something goes wrong.
- Owners buying a business who need a lawyer who understands both the legal mechanics and the practical realities of due diligence, financing conditions, and negotiating with a seller.
- Owners selling a business, often after ten or twenty years of building it, who need someone thinking about deal structure, tax exposure, and getting the sale process right the first time, because there usually isn't a second chance to get the price right.
If any of these sound familiar, they're not abstract categories to me. They're the actual matters I work on every week, and most of the guides on this site exist because a real client brought in the question first.
Why is an entrepreneur's biggest legal risk not a lawsuit?
Because the expensive problems are almost always the things that never got written down properly at the start, not the disputes that follow years later. A verbal understanding with a co-founder that never made it into a shareholder agreement. A lease signed without understanding the assignment clause or the personal guarantee buried in it. A business sale structured the wrong way for reasons nobody explained. By the time any of these becomes a problem, it's expensive to fix and sometimes impossible to fully undo.
Working with entrepreneurs specifically means catching these issues before they happen, not just cleaning them up after. It means being available early: a short conversation before you sign something, not just representation after a dispute has already started. And it means understanding that for most business owners, the legal decision and the business decision are the same decision. They can't be separated the way they sometimes are in a large corporation with dedicated legal, finance and operations teams.
About to sign something?
A short conversation before you sign costs a fraction of unwinding it after.
When should a business owner call a lawyer?
Before the signature, not after the problem; the moments where early advice genuinely changes the outcome are all "before" moments. Owners often wait too long, either because they think the matter isn't big enough yet or because they're worried about the cost before they even ask. A few concrete moments where getting advice early makes a real difference:
- Before you take on a business partner or co-founder, not after a disagreement starts.
- Before you sign a commercial lease, particularly around assignment clauses and personal guarantees.
- Before you agree to terms with a supplier or customer that you'll be relying on repeatedly.
- Before you list your business for sale, or make an offer to buy one. The preparation work starts long before a buyer appears.
- The moment a dispute starts feeling personal rather than just business.
None of these require a large retainer or an ongoing relationship. They require a lawyer who'll give a straight, practical answer in a single conversation, which is the whole model behind the free consultation.
How is this different from the big-firm model?
It's a difference of fit, not quality: the big-firm model is excellent for big companies and structurally wrong for most owner-operated businesses. This isn't about who works harder or knows more law. It's about what each model is built to serve:
| Big-firm model | Entrepreneur's lawyer | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Companies with in-house counsel and standing legal budgets | Owner-operators making their own legal decisions |
| Pricing | Hourly billing across teams of timekeepers | Flat and capped fees where the scope is predictable |
| Who you deal with | Partner supervises; juniors do much of the work | The lawyer you retained does the work |
| Best moment to call | When a matter is already large | Before you sign, while the fix is still cheap |
| Advice style | Formal memos covering every contingency | A straight answer about what actually matters |
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a lawyer on retainer to run a small business?
No. Most small businesses don't need a standing retainer; they need the right help at a handful of specific moments: incorporating, taking on a partner, signing a lease, buying or selling the business, or responding to a dispute. Defined-scope engagements, priced as flat or capped fees where the scope is predictable, let an owner get advice at those moments without paying for a relationship they're not using in between.
How much does a business lawyer cost in Toronto?
It depends on the work and on how the lawyer bills. Hourly rates in Toronto vary widely with seniority and firm size, which is why the more useful question is usually the total cost of the matter, not the rate. For predictable-scope work such as incorporations, shareholder agreements, contract drafting and many business purchases and sales, flat or capped fees are available and let an owner budget for legal work the way they budget for accounting or insurance.
When should I incorporate my business?
There's no single right moment, but the factors are consistent: how much liability the business is taking on through contracts, employees and leases; whether the tax deferral of leaving profits in a corporation is worth anything to you yet; and whether customers or investors expect to deal with a corporation. Incorporation creates a separate legal entity and limits personal liability, but the shield isn't absolute (personal guarantees, certain director liabilities and personal wrongdoing all reach through it), so the decision deserves a real conversation rather than a rule of thumb.
Do I need a shareholder agreement if my business partner is a friend?
Especially then. A shareholder agreement isn't a sign of distrust; it's the record of what you both actually intend while you still agree. The hardest disputes I see are between former friends and family members who never wrote down what happens when one wants out, one stops contributing, or one dies, because they assumed they'd never need to. The time to put an agreement in place is before there's anything to disagree about.
What does the free consultation actually cover?
Thirty minutes on where you stand: what your situation actually is legally, what work would genuinely help, what's urgent versus what can wait, and what it would cost. Sometimes the honest answer is that you don't need a lawyer yet, and I'll say so. There's no obligation and no pressure to retain.
Do you work with business owners outside Toronto?
Yes. The practice is based in Toronto, but I act for founders and owners across the GTA and Ontario, and most of the work (consultations, drafting, reviewing, closing) happens remotely, without any need to come downtown.
Final thoughts
I didn't set out to build a law firm that serves everyone. I set out to build one that understands what it's like to build something from nothing, take on the risk personally, and need a lawyer who treats that seriously without treating it like a Fortune 500 file. After 15+ years at the bar, that's still what "the entrepreneur's lawyer" means here: not a slogan, but a description of who I show up for and how.
If you're building, buying or selling a business and want a straight answer about where you stand, book a free 30-minute consultation.
Building, buying, or selling something?
If you want a straight answer about where you stand, before you sign rather than after, book a free 30-minute consultation. Sometimes the honest answer is that you don't need a lawyer yet, and I'll tell you that too.