The last file you close.

A legal career leaves a long paper trail. Every closed file is a promise kept to a client, and some of those promises outlast the lawyer who made them. When a lawyer retires or a practice closes, the files don’t retire too.

How long is long enough?

There is no single rule. LAWPRO, the insurer for Ontario lawyers, has long suggested fifteen years as a sensible starting point, tied to the ultimate limitation period in Ontario’s Limitations Act, 2002. Some files deserve much longer: real estate, wills and estates, family matters, and anything involving minors or clients who lacked capacity.

Check the Law Society of Ontario’s current guidance on keeping, transferring and destroying files before you decide.

Decide each file’s future once, and write it down.

The work most people put off

List every closed file and where it lives, including boxes in off-site storage. Name a custodian, so former clients know who to call. Then decide, file by file or by category, what is kept, transferred, scanned or destroyed.

Scanned closed files, named by file number and client, turn a basement of boxes into an archive a successor can search in seconds. Keep the index in a second secure place. When originals are destroyed, get a certificate of destruction, so the record of what happened is as good as the files were.

The real point

Closing a practice well is the final act of client service. It protects former clients, it protects your successor, and it lets you leave knowing every promise is still being kept.

General guidance only, not legal or regulatory advice.