Firings, severance, harassment and human rights at work. You pick a side: employers or employees.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Typical
$110,000
First year at a boutique
$65,000
Partner at a big firm
$300,000
Established employment lawyers earn $80,000 to $200,000. Employer-side lawyers at national firms sit on the Bay Street pay scale. Employee-side boutiques pay less to start, but partners with a steady flow of severance files do very well.
$130,000 to $135,000 to start
Labour and employment group at a large Toronto firm, on the same pay scale as corporate
Steady work: companies need advice every time they hire, fire, restructure or get a human rights complaint. Billed by the hour to the employer.
$70,000 to $100,000 to start
Boutique firms acting for fired or harassed workers
Many employee-side firms charge a flat fee to review a severance package, then a percentage of whatever improvement they negotiate. Fired executives with large packages are the best clients.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a three year undergraduate degree at cheaper tuition, a law school at the low end of Canadian fees, and the licensing process. The high end is four years of undergraduate study and a law school charging $35,000 a year. Law school tuition is the swing factor and it varies more than any other part of this route. Articling is paid, so that year is income rather than cost, though the licensing exams and fees themselves still run $5,000 to $8,000.
No extra exams. Workplace investigation training, a few days of courses, is a common add-on a few years in.
Big-firm package on the employer side
Health, dental, parental top-up, bonus.
Results-based pay on the employee side
Contingency and flat-fee work means income tracks what you win.
In-house roles
Large employers hire employment counsel with corporate benefits and normal hours.
Government jobs with a pension
Ontario's Ministry of Labour, the Human Rights Legal Support Centre and the tribunals all employ lawyers.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Same licence as every lawyer. The side you article on tends to become the side you stay on.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
English, business and law courses.
Bachelor's degree
3 to 4 years
Business, industrial relations, psychology and political science are common. Any subject works. Write the LSAT (law school admission test).
Law school (JD, juris doctor)
3 years
Take employment law, labour law, human rights and administrative law. Many schools have a workers' rights clinic.
Articling
About 1 year
8 to 10 months in the labour and employment group of a big firm, at a boutique on either side, or at a legal clinic, plus the barrister and solicitor licensing exams. Ontario's Law Practice Program is the alternative.
Called to the bar
Ceremony
Pick a side. Switching from employer to employee side later is possible, but firms on each side are wary of the other.
English
Termination letters, contracts and tribunal submissions.
Business
How companies are organized and why they restructure.
Law and civics
Where provincial and federal rules come from.
Psychology
Harassment and discrimination cases are about people under stress.
Your provincial law society licenses you and the licence moves between provinces under the national mobility agreement. In Ontario, licensed paralegals can also appear at the Human Rights Tribunal, the Ontario Labour Relations Board and Small Claims Court, so a lot of smaller workplace disputes are handled by paralegals rather than lawyers.
Employment law
Non-union workplaces. Contracts, firings, severance, harassment, human rights. This page.
Labour law
Unionized workplaces. Collective bargaining, grievances, arbitration, strikes. A related but separate specialty.
Most firms do both
The groups are usually called labour and employment, and juniors often try each.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Workplace investigations
Employers hire outside lawyers to investigate harassment complaints. Training courses exist, and the work is steady.
Executive employment
Negotiating contracts and exits for senior executives. Big packages, big fees.
Occupational health and safety
Defending companies after a workplace injury or death. Serious and well paid.
Pensions and benefits
A dense sub-specialty that few lawyers understand.
Privacy
Employee monitoring, data and remote work raise new questions every year.
A summer in human resources
You will understand your clients' world.
Mediation training
Most employment cases settle at mediation.
French
Federal workplaces and Quebec employers need bilingual advice.
A workers' rights clinic in law school
Real files, real clients, on the employee side.
Employment lawyers move in-house more easily than most. Large companies keep an employment counsel on staff, and some lawyers cross over completely into senior human resources roles, running people operations rather than advising them. The pay is a salary rather than billings, and the hours are closer to normal.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Employee side: a call with someone fired yesterday, walking through their severance letter and telling them not to sign it. Employer side: drafting that letter for a company, and advising on how to let 40 people go without getting sued. Both sides: a mediation at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, a contract review, a witness interview in a harassment investigation. Court is rare. Tribunals and negotiation are constant.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
In most of the US an employer can fire you for any reason with no notice. In Canada a non-union employee fired without cause is owed reasonable notice or pay instead, often months of salary. Arguing over how many months is the core of wrongful dismissal law.
Courts generally treat 24 months of pay as the upper limit of reasonable notice for a long-serving employee, though they have gone higher in exceptional cases. Provincial employment standards laws set a much lower floor, about a week per year of service up to 8 weeks in Ontario.
Since 2021, Ontario employers cannot make most employees sign a non-compete clause. Executives are the main exception. Employment lawyers spent years arguing about clauses that are now simply void.
Banks, airlines, railways, telecoms and a few other industries are federally regulated, so their workers fall under the Canada Labour Code. Everyone else is covered by provincial law. An employment lawyer has to ask which one applies before answering any question.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students.