Beyond Bay Street

Connectez-vous pour écouter l'article

As an ambitious, hard-working law student at the University of Saskatchewan, Talon Regent always envisioned a big-city career. But spending a summer at a major Calgary firm changed his mind. He decided he didn’t want a life that involved long commutes and 60-plus-hour workweeks that left him feeling like a cog in a machine.

So he looked for small-town opportunities. A search revealed that there were just 14 lawyers serving Moose Jaw’s 35,000 residents. After articling with a local firm, he launched his own general practice. 

His initial marketing involved emailing other lawyers in town, offering to take files they were too busy to handle. Within three months, he was fully booked.

A decade later, in 2025, Regent opted to join Stringam Law. 

“I’ve been loving it,” he says. “I am still a small urban practitioner, but I have the strength of a large Western Canadian law firm behind me.” 

Substantive work out of the gate

Smaller centres don’t just offer work — they offer interesting work.

“[There’s] a notion that the big cases are happening in the big cities, and if you really want to make a name for yourself, you need to do it in one of the major city centres,” says Sharon Sabourin, who leads the criminal law practice at GBK Lawyers in Timmins, Ontario. 

“It’s absolutely not true.”

She’s tackled Charter issues, serious fraud, dangerous offender cases, Gardiner hearings at sentencing and much more, serving communities across northwestern Ontario and on the Nunavut circuit court. 

“Even as a junior lawyer, you’re going to get significant cases more often because there’s more work than there are lawyers to do it,” Sabourin says. 

“For somebody who does criminal litigation, there’s really no better place to be as far as I’m concerned.”

Bright minds, enviable lifestyle

Iain McCarvill agrees. After completing an LLM at Harvard in 2019, he toyed with the idea of joining a big Boston firm. Instead, he returned to his home province of Prince Edward Island and joined Key Murray Law in Summerside. 

“It wasn’t very long before I was robed up and down at the Supreme Court,” he says. 

Today, he’s a partner focused mainly on municipal law. The benefits include working with high-calibre colleagues — a former chair of the Bank of Canada is down the hall — and a collegial bar. 

“The reality is that we commonly work on opposite sides of files with the same lawyers,” McCarvill says. 

“This tends to create an environment where we go hard on the problem, rather than on opposing counsel.” 

Then there are the lifestyle perks, including a three-minute commute and a designated parking spot. 

The best of both worlds

Sandra MacKenzie, who left Toronto to join Lawson Lundell’s Yellowknife office as an associate in 2011, believes smaller centres offer the best of both worlds.  

“You can have the really interesting legal issues and a very rewarding career, but also have a really nice work-life balance,” she says. 

Now a partner specializing in labour and employment, human rights, and administrative law, MacKenzie points to plenty of opportunity for advancement, a strong community of friends, and “amazing” access to the outdoors. 

“In the wintertime, we have a skating rink in our backyard, and in the summertime, you can kayak out the back door.”

The money question

Choosing a smaller community doesn’t necessarily mean a smaller paycheque. As an associate at Lawson Lundell, MacKenzie earned as much as she would have with the Bay Street firm where she articled. Her husband, also a lawyer, earned more working for legal aid in the Northwest Territories than he had at a small Toronto firm.

And while housing in Yellowknife can be just as expensive as Toronto — and groceries even more — they save money because they aren’t paying for tickets to the Maple Leafs or dining out. 

Further south, salaries in smaller centres may be lower. However, so are the costs of living and running a business.  

The going fees for legal services depend on how much your neighbours can afford — and how much you feel comfortable charging them. But as Regent points out, there’s room to set higher rates when demand outstrips supply.

“You can work as much or as little as you want and get paid as much or as little as you want,” he says. 

“If you are content to work 35 hours a week and get paid $150,000 a year, you can do that. If you want to work 80 hours a week and make $450,000 a year, you can do that too.”

The challenges

Smaller communities do have their drawbacks. If you’ve come from away, you may be far from family and friends. Career opportunities for spouses can be fewer, and the nightlife limited. In the North, winters are long and dark, power outages happen regularly, and court dates get cancelled because of the weather.

“You have to be a bit more flexible and adaptable,” MacKenzie says.

You also have to be a good lawyer.

“Practicing in the North is just a whole different beast than it is in the South,” Sabourin says. 

“If we’re looking at setting a date in a community that only sits four times a year, you don’t have the luxury of asking for a four-day trial. So it forces you to focus.”

And while it’s possible to specialize — at least to a degree — over time, small-town lawyers typically wear many hats. That said, technology is breaking some of those geographical limitations. 

“There’s nothing inherent that prevents young and technologically savvy lawyers from thriving in a small community,” says Regent, who uses virtual tools to serve clients across Saskatchewan.

Making an impact

McCarvill has no regrets about forgoing big-city opportunities. Driving around his part of the East Coast, he’s constantly reminded of the matters he’s been involved in, everything from a newly-constructed roundabout to homes he helped his neighbours buy. 

“If your goal is to make an impact and to do so in a very real way, effectively, immediately, then working in a small town is the perfect place to do that,” he says.