How to send a fax to a law firm

Before you send

• Get the fax number from the lawyer's current letterhead, email signature or the firm's website. Large firms may have different numbers for different offices or practice groups.
• Note the firm's file or matter number, which their staff use to route documents.
• Ask whether the lawyer wants the document by fax at all. Some firms prefer a secure upload portal for large or sensitive files.
• Check any deadline. If the document must arrive by a certain time, send well before it and confirm the firm's cut-off.

Send the fax online

sendfaxonline.ca recommends FaxToFax.com, which works in any modern browser and has safeguards built for the Federation of Law Societies of Canada's Model Code rule 3.3 on confidentiality, as well as PIPEDA.

1. Sign the document first if needed. FaxToFax does not offer e-signatures, so sign on paper and scan it, or sign in another tool and save the result as a PDF.
2. Sign in to FaxToFax with your email and the one-time code.
3. Attach the PDF, keeping pages in the order the firm expects.
4. Add your cover page, using a saved template if you send to lawyers often.
5. Enter the firm's fax number and confirm it on the check screen.
6. Send, or schedule it if the firm asked for documents at a particular time.

If you are faxing on behalf of a business

Businesses that regularly send documents to lawyers can use the Business plan for a shared inbox, five users and an audit log of every view, download and send. Roles (owner, admin, member and viewer) let you limit who can see legal correspondence.

Lawyers themselves should check their own law society's version of the confidentiality rules, since each province and territory adopts its own code based on the Federation's model. A fax service can support those obligations, but the firm's own practices still matter.