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DIVERSITY REPORT LAW OFFICE MANAGEMENT A surfeit of clients D Small firms serving ethnic communities can make a real difference and provide rewarding work for lawyers. BY KEVIN MARRON jawid Taheri doesn't want to turn clients away, even if they can't afford to pay his fees. As an immi- grant from Afghanistan and a prominent member of the Toronto Afghan commu- nity, he feels compelled to respond to the needs of people who don't speak English or understand the Canadian legal system and could probably not find anyone else to help them. Yet, even though Taheri maintains that "money isn't everything," he does acknowledge he also has to make a living out of his solo law practice. Fernand Majid faces similar pressures. An Urdu-speaking lawyer of Pakistani background, who hails from New Brunswick and now has a solo practice in Toronto, Majid has often taken on litigation cases where the client's resources run out before his legal remedies are exhausted. "So you end up seeing the cases through, even though you're not paid for it," he says. That is the downside of running a small ethnic law firm. The upside is there is no shortage of potential clients in under-served diverse communities and many of them can afford to pay. Either way, the demands are huge and highly complicated by the cultural differences and language barriers that clients face. And running such a practice well, according to Taheri, Majid, and other lawyers serving such communities, requires a mix of determination, discipline, flexibility, and creativity. "It's more time-consuming, more www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com OC T OBER 2009 19 KATHRYN JANKOWSKI YUTA ONODA