About PLAIN
Legal rights, in plain language — researched carefully, written honestly.
PLAIN helps people in Canada understand their legal rights without needing a law degree. Here's who's behind it, how we research every guide, and the line we never cross.
Who makes PLAIN
PLAIN is built and maintained by its founder — one person who got tired of watching friends and family get pushed around in situations where they actually had rights, simply because the law was written in language no normal person can read. Every guide on this site is researched, written, and reviewed by that same person, against primary sources, before it goes live.
We're a small, independent project, not a law firm and not a big content mill churning out articles. That's deliberate. It means every page is something a real person stands behind — and it's why we publish the date each guide was last reviewed, so you always know how current it is.
How we research every guide
We don't write legal information from memory or copy it from other websites. Every factual claim — every deadline, dollar amount, percentage, and form number — is checked against the primary source before we publish it. That means:
- The actual laws. We go to the statutes themselves (on official government and legislative sites) — the Residential Tenancies Act, the Employment Standards Act, the relevant consumer-protection laws — not someone else's summary of them.
- Government and tribunal sources. We rely on official sources like ontario.ca, the Landlord and Tenant Board, the Ministry of Labour, and other government bodies for current figures and procedures.
- Trusted legal-aid organizations. We cross-check against respected public-legal-education sources like Steps to Justice (CLEO) and community legal clinics.
- Every source is linked. At the bottom of each guide, we list the sources we used, so you can verify anything yourself and read further.
We keep guides current
Laws change. Rent-increase guidelines update every year, dollar limits get adjusted, and new legislation can change deadlines and rules. So we treat our research as something to maintain, not publish once and forget. Each guide shows a "last reviewed" date, and when a figure is in transition — a law that's passed but not yet in force, for example — we say so plainly and tell you to confirm the current rule before you act on it.
Information, not advice
This is the line we never cross: PLAIN gives legal information, not legal advice. We can explain what the law generally says and what your options usually are. We can't tell you what you specifically should do, represent you, or replace a lawyer who knows the full details of your situation.
For advice about your specific circumstances, you should talk to a licensed lawyer, paralegal, or your local community legal clinic — and throughout PLAIN, we point you to free and low-cost ones. Using PLAIN doesn't create a lawyer-client relationship.
How we make money
PLAIN is free to start. A low-cost optional plan helps cover the real costs of running the service (the AI that powers it isn't free to operate). We don't sell your data, we don't take referral fees for sending you to any particular lawyer, and we don't run ads. Our only goal is to help you understand where you stand.
Have a situation you're trying to make sense of? Start with PLAIN — it's free, and it takes a couple of minutes.