Co-Counselling Agreements

What you can do

• Between two RCICs, not the client

  The client is the subject of the matter, not a signer of the CCA. Only the two RCICs sign — keeping the regulatory arrangement separate from the client-facing Service Agreement.

• Lead + co-counsel role allocation

  Pick which RCIC is the lead (carries SA-side responsibility to the client) and which is co-counsel. Authority for updates, instructions, document signing, and decisions is allocated explicitly per party.

• Fee split: percentage or fixed amount

  Compensation between the two RCICs is structured as a percentage of the professional fee or as a fixed dollar amount. Optional client-facing disclosure prose is embedded verbatim in the generated Service Agreement.

• Tenant-number profile share with consent

  Invite the other RCIC by their RCIC App tenant number (TN). Their firm receives a consent request listing exactly what will be shared (firm name, address, RCIC name and CICC ID, licence class, TN) and what will not (no client information, no matter data, no internal records). On accept, the invited profile pre-fills the agreement; on decline, you enter their details manually.

• Secure portal signing for the invited RCIC

  The invited RCIC receives a secure email link. The portal asks them to confirm their email as a soft second factor, then renders the full document with a typed-name signature field. They can also decline or request changes from the same portal.

• Owner-password protected signed PDF

  Once both RCICs have signed, the merged PDF is owner-password protected (print and copy allowed, modify and form-fill blocked) and emailed as an attachment to both RCICs. Each page carries an audit footer with signer details, redacted IP, and UTC timestamp.

• Auto-generated Service Agreement draft

  When the initiating tenant is the lead RCIC, completing the CCA automatically creates an editable Service Agreement draft with the client, matter, scope, family members, and the co-counsel party pre-filled (with the agreed fee share carried over). You review and finalize through the existing Service Agreement Builder; the link to the draft appears on the CCA's lifecycle page.

• Family members and shared scope

  Add family members to the matter once; the CCA carries them onto the generated Service Agreement with citizenship and residence notes preserved. Scope items written once in the CCA are imported into the SA without retyping.

• Encrypted at rest under your tenant key

  Every CCA, every party identity, and the signed PDF itself are encrypted at rest under your tenant's data encryption key. The audit ledger is append-only with an UPDATE-immutable trigger so the legal-defensibility record cannot be tampered with after the fact.

• Bilingual EN + fr-CA

  Build the agreement in English or Quebec French; the invited RCIC's portal renders in their preferred language. Twenty-two bilingual clauses cover the full working arrangement.

• Daily reminder cron

  While the invited RCIC has not yet signed, a daily reminder email goes out from the platform until they sign, decline, or request changes — so a forgotten review doesn't stall the matter.

• Regulatory affirmations

  Both RCICs affirm informed-consent capture from the client, conflict-check completion, competence for the allocated scope, no inducement or fee-splitting beyond what is structured, confidentiality acknowledgment, and (for the lead) SA-side responsibility to the client. The affirmations are captured at finalize time and printed in the signed document.