Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Me Sonia Bilodeau claimed $3,679.22 from former client Saif Eddine Guigua, representing the full amount of Invoice 1451 for legal services rendered in connection with an immigration removal order appeal.
• At issue was whether the parties had agreed to a flat fee of $3,200 covering both the removal inquiry and the appeal, or whether Me Bilodeau was entitled to charge separately for each stage.
• No written fee agreement was signed; conventions sent by Me Bilodeau in August 2023 were never executed, and her invoices were backdated to dates that predated the services they purported to cover.
• Credibility of Me Bilodeau's evidence was undermined by inconsistencies in her timesheet, errors in her testimony regarding key dates, and her failure to produce her complete client file at trial.
• Quebec's Civil Code, the Bar Act, and the Code of Professional Conduct for Lawyers governed the court's assessment of the applicable fee standard and Me Bilodeau's disclosure obligations to her client.
• Procedural irregularities — including transposed claim descriptions across two court files and the unnecessary duplication of file-opening fees — further weighed against Me Bilodeau's position.

Facts of the case

Saif Eddine Guigua, a permanent resident of Canada, consulted Me Sonia Bilodeau in February 2023 regarding a removal order issued against him under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA). The removal measure arose from a criminal conviction constituting serious criminality under the IRPA, for which Mr. Guigua received a sentence of six months less a day. The matter involved two stages: first, a summary inquiry before the Immigration Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) under section 44 of the IRPA; and second, an appeal before the IRB's Immigration Appeal Division on humanitarian and compassionate grounds under section 63(3) of the IRPA, based on Mr. Guigua's marriage and his role as a parental figure for his spouse's child.

Mr. Guigua testified — without contradiction — that the parties agreed at their first meeting to a flat fee of $3,200 for all services related to the removal order: $1,500 for the immigration inquiry and $1,700 for the appeal. He stated that he had consulted other lawyers before retaining Me Bilodeau, and that those lawyers had estimated the value of the services at approximately $3,300. Me Bilodeau acknowledged that no written fee agreement was signed at the outset, describing the arrangement as verbal. On August 13, 2023 — several months after services had begun — she transmitted two unsigned fee conventions to Mr. Guigua by email. Mr. Guigua did not see this email, as it was redirected to his spam folder, a fact he only discovered when Me Bilodeau followed up on payment months later.

On August 26, 2023, Me Bilodeau issued two invoices, both backdated: Invoice 1394, backdated to March 9, 2023, for $3,104.32 (including taxes and a $200 file-opening fee), covering the section 44 inquiry; and Invoice 1451, backdated to April 25, 2023, for $3,679.22 (including taxes and a $200 file-opening fee), covering the appeal stage. Neither invoice contained any itemization — no hours worked, no meeting dates, no telephone call records, and no dates of court attendance or decisions rendered. The immigration inquiry before the commissioner lasted ten minutes and the appeal hearing lasted one hour, both conducted by videoconference. The appeal was heard on October 25, 2023, and the Immigration Appeal Division rendered its decision on November 7, 2023 — a three-and-a-half-page decision in which the Minister was in favour of granting the special measure that could lead to cancellation of the removal order.

On November 19, 2023, Me Bilodeau emailed Mr. Guigua advising him of the decision and reminding him that an outstanding balance of $554.32 remained on Invoice 1394 and that Invoice 1451 remained entirely unpaid. Mr. Guigua immediately sought to contact Me Bilodeau to request an explanation of the billing; she neither called him back nor arranged a meeting. On January 6, 2024, Me Bilodeau issued a formal demand for payment. Mr. Guigua replied the same day, disputing the second invoice as fabricated and requesting a meeting to settle what he considered his legitimate outstanding debt. On March 24, 2025, Me Bilodeau filed two separate claims in the Small Claims Division. The first (docket 500-32-166139-255), for the balance on Invoice 1394, did not proceed to hearing because Mr. Guigua deposited $472.95 with the court shortly after receiving the claim. The present proceeding concerned the balance claimed on Invoice 1451. At the outset of the hearing, Me Bilodeau acknowledged an error: the description pages of the two claims had been transposed, reversing the descriptions of services rendered in each file.

Policy terms and contractual clauses at issue

The court's analysis was governed by several key legal provisions. Article 2109 of the Civil Code of Québec provides that where a service contract is at a fixed price, the client must pay the agreed amount and cannot seek a reduction on the basis that the work required less effort or cost less than anticipated; equally, the service provider cannot claim an increase on the contrary ground. In the absence of a fee agreement, article 126 of the Bar Act entitles a lawyer to fees and costs based on the value of services rendered. Article 3.08.02 of the Code of Professional Conduct for Lawyers requires that fees be reasonable in the circumstances and proportionate to the services rendered, having regard to the benefit obtained or prejudice avoided for the client. Article 99 of the same Code obliges a lawyer, before providing professional services, to ensure the client has all relevant information about fees and to obtain the client's agreement; the lawyer must also keep the client informed during the mandate of any circumstances that may lead to significant changes in the anticipated cost. Article 100 requires a lawyer to provide the client, in a timely manner, with all explanations necessary to understand the fee amount and payment terms. Finally, article 4 of the Interest Act provides that no interest exceeding five percent per annum is exigible unless the contract expressly states the applicable rate.

Reasoning and analysis

The court found Me Bilodeau's testimony unreliable on several grounds. Her initial account — that the section 44 inquiry was a mere formality given the seriousness of Mr. Guigua's conviction — was consistent with Mr. Guigua's position that the inquiry stage did not justify separate or substantial fees. When Me Bilodeau attempted to walk back this characterization after hearing Mr. Guigua's evidence, the court declined to accept the revised version. Her timesheet, the only contemporaneous record she produced, contained internal inconsistencies: the first two entries totalled one hour and thirty minutes respectively, yet she recorded "2 h 30" in the billed amount column; and while her testimony referred to 61 hours of work, the timesheet showed a total of 63 hours as of July 22, 2023. The timesheet entries were also largely illegible, which Me Bilodeau herself acknowledged. The court further noted that Invoice 1451 — ostensibly covering the appeal — was backdated to April 25, 2023, yet Me Bilodeau's own records showed she did not begin drafting the notice of appeal until May 4, 2023, meaning the invoice predated the commencement of the work it purported to cover. She was unable to explain why she maintained a timesheet at all if the parties had agreed to a flat fee. At trial, Me Bilodeau did not have her complete client file and could not produce the written submissions filed with the Immigration Appeal Division.

By contrast, the court accepted Mr. Guigua's evidence as credible. His account — that the parties had agreed to a flat fee of $3,200 inclusive of both stages, and that he had paid in accordance with that agreement — was consistent with Me Bilodeau's own initial characterization of the inquiry as a formality, with the brevity of both hearings, and with the estimates he had received from other lawyers before retaining her. The court also noted that Mr. Guigua had made a $1,000 cash payment toward Invoice 1394, his habitual mode of payment, and that Me Bilodeau had accepted this payment without raising the unsigned fee conventions or the outstanding Invoice 1451.

The court further found that Me Bilodeau's conduct violated her professional obligations. Her refusal in November 2023 and January 2024 to provide Mr. Guigua with any explanation of her billing breached article 100 of the Code of Professional Conduct for Lawyers. Her failure to inform him at the outset of the fee structure and payment terms, or to keep him informed of anticipated cost increases during the mandate, was inconsistent with article 99. Me Bilodeau was also held not entitled to interest at the claimed rate of 15% per annum, as this rate was never communicated to Mr. Guigua prior to the filing of the claim and was not stated in the invoices, contrary to the requirements of the Interest Act. Nor was she entitled to interest running from the date of Invoice 1451, given that the invoice was backdated and was only transmitted to Mr. Guigua for the first time on August 26, 2023 — and that he did not become aware of it until November 19, 2023. Interest could only begin to run from the date of Me Bilodeau's formal demand letter of January 6, 2024. The court also remarked that the 61 hours Me Bilodeau claimed to have devoted to the appeal appeared disproportionate given the nature of the humanitarian grounds invoked and the three-and-a-half-page length of the resulting decision, and that her decision to pursue recovery across two separate court files unnecessarily duplicated file-opening fees.

Ruling and overall outcome

The court allowed the claim in part. Having found that the parties agreed to a flat fee of $3,200, the total amount payable with applicable taxes came to $3,679.20. As Mr. Guigua had already paid $3,104.32, the court ordered him to pay the outstanding balance of $574.88 to Me Sonia Bilodeau, with interest at the legal rate plus the additional indemnity under article 1619 of the Civil Code of Québec, running from January 6, 2024. While Me Bilodeau succeeded to the extent that a balance was found owing, the court departed from the usual rule that costs follow the event, ordering each party to bear their own legal costs in light of the circumstances underlying the decision.