The view from a 32nd floor downtown Vancouver office is magnificent. To be able to look up from your desk and see ships anchored in English Bay in one direction and mountains in another is quite breathtaking. But as beautiful as the views are, you need to find time to appreciate them. Concentrating on litigation was so demanding that lawyer Kat Kinch, rarely had the opportunity to appreciate the view from her skyscraper office. She realized, instead of chasing the partner dream, she was in need of a new adventure, new ideas, and time to appreciate a new view.
With an impending new arrival and a toddler in tow, Kat and her husband, Aaron Eddie, made two decisions, one to pick up sticks and move back to Ontario, and two, to open their own law firm. Kat’s mother offered a soft landing with an invitation to live with in her in Warkworth, allowing the couple time to contemplate their next move.
In preparation, Aaron retrained as a paralegal at Loyalist College. During a conversation over lunch with a high school acquaintance and lawyer Ashley Tinney-Fischer, Kat learned she turned away a litigation file every week. Those clients Ashley referred to firms in Peterborough or Belleville, but would have liked to see them served closer to home. As a seasoned litigator, Kat’s interest was piqued. The idea of bringing big city law firm skills to the community that provided her earliest education and jobs was intriguing. “People deserve to have access to legal services in their community,” she says.
April Fool’s Day 2015 saw Kat open the doors to her own firm in Campbellford with a desk, a laptop and a repurposed dining room table where client files could be spread out. “In the early days, we had people bring shopping bags and cardboard boxes full of documents as their evidence. Some had been kept in the car’s glovebox for years!” Steadily the phone started to ring, with land use cases, family law, and business disputes. Soon, Kat was joined by Aaron, now a licensed paralegal and partner in Kinch Eddie Litigation, and then Justin Savoy, the firm’s first full-time employee, a paralegal who did his practicum with Kat.
Kat notes, “It was a big step hiring full-time staff. We started out intent on running a small shop, just enough work to keep the lights on and both of us busy. But Aaron has always been the one with a vision to grow the business. I get absorbed in my files and he encouraged me to see that we should do something bigger. There was a real need.”
By 2019, the young firm outgrew its original space and relocated over the bridge into Campbellford’s commercial centre, buying and renovating a storefront with four offices, a meeting room, file space, and a front desk for newly-hired administrator, Kim Watson. “People would call and say, ‘I never knew there was a firm like yours in town’ and we would tell them we’d already been in town for five years!” says Aaron. “They would sit at the lights at the foot of the bridge and see our office and call us when they got home. Often they had been looking for a lawyer for a while without luck and were really happy to discover we were there.”
Rural areas are under served for litigation work. Usually, sole practitioners or small firms in places like Trent Hills focus on real estate transactions, drafting wills or estate administration. There was a gap in this area for court services after local lawyer Bill Baker ceased practising, years before Kat returned. She recalls, “Ashley gifted me two pieces of justice-themed art she had from Bill’s old office, as well as a very useful Cerlox machine for binding court paperwork. It’s great to still have that history in our office today.”
Running a litigation practice in a small town comes with high personal stakes, fulfilling the trust of your home community, and bumping into clients while shopping for groceries, at the syrup festival or the fall fair. The firm opened with all of Kat’s high school yearbooks on the shelf, ready to put names to familiar faces and get to work on their current disputes. Kat and Aaron invest their free time volunteering, and giving back to organizations like Westben, St. Paul’s United Church, Incredible Edibles, and the Trent Hills Chamber of Commerce. Today, Kat is an active member of the Northumberland Master Gardeners and Spirit of the Hills, having found that rural practice offers opportunities not just to look out the window, but to pursue passions such as gardening and watercolour painting.
Steaming along in its new Bridge Street location, the practice hired a second lawyer, Jessica Stutt, just as the pandemic loomed. Kat remembers, “Many lawyers closed up shop, went to the cottage, retired, or changed areas. In those first six months while the courts adapted, people still needed help with the new problems brought by Covid but they couldn’t get through to many other firms. We had this little office and we were an essential service, so we figured out how to have our staff work safely on rotation. We made a Zoom room with an outside door so our clients had reliable internet for court, a mask-free space to be on camera, and the same direct support they would get in courthouse hallways. We answered the phones every single day. It was the right decision. By September 2020, we were flooded with new intakes.”
Demand continued to grow, obliging further recruitment: Jenna Khoury-Hanna arrived as the firm’s third lawyer, well-timed to address a wave of new land tribunal planning cases. More staff and students followed. Now almost every other business day, a lawyer or paralegal from Kinch Eddie Litigation represents a client in court, at a tribunal, or in mediation or arbitration.
Placements are offered to practicum students from the paralegal programs at Loyalist and Fleming colleges, as well as jobs for law students. Aaron says, “This year we took on our first articling student, Natalie Geysens. We are looking forward to Natalie joining Jessica Stutt in the family law practice when she is called to the bar later this year.” In spring 2025, another locally-raised lawyer will return to Northumberland County when Grace Missen comes on board, focusing on civil litigation work with Kat and Jenna.
Expanding personnel, plus a growing assortment of dogs, and the ongoing use of Zoom court has required the firm to relocate yet again. Kinch Eddie Litigation now occupies two storefronts across from the Aron Theatre, the main office at 53 and the Bullpen at 55 Bridge Street East. The firm runs hundreds of dispute files annually, serving clients from Muskoka to Durham in the west to Kaladar and Hastings County and PEC in the east. Kat says, “Our enthusiasm and local knowledge is key. I’ve had situations where a lawyer in the city didn’t know what a septic system really was, or doesn’t understand the winter drives and country roads involved in a custody situation. That’s not us. We go to sites involved in our cases. We invite opposing counsel to come out our way, so we can find resolutions that work on the ground. We’ve been to old cemeteries, trestle bridges, beautiful lakes, you name it, whatever our cases need.”
The first ten years of rural litigation practice at Kinch Eddie Litigation has been about living, working and serving clients in the real world, right here in the local community. The unconventional decision to trade in a magnificent view you don’t get the chance to appreciate has led to a thriving company with a clear view of its role. At Kinch Eddie Litigation, it’s about being there for your clients, giving back to a shared community, seeing legal challenges from an experienced local perspective, and constantly adapting to meet the needs of the people, businesses and organizations the firm serves.
