YLaw Named a Recommended Family & Divorce Law Firm in British Columbia by Doyle’s Guide 2026
Canada’s largest female-led law firm receives first-ever Doyle’s Guide firm recognition: a peer-voted ranking that cannot be bought or self-nominated
YLaw, Canada’s largest female-led law firm, has been named a Recommended Family & Divorce Law Firm in British Columbia by Doyle’s Guide 2026.
Doyle’s Guide is one of the most credible and widely referenced legal ranking organizations operating across Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. Law firms are identified through a rigorous peer-review process conducted among the legal community itself: lawyers nominating other firms and practitioners whose work they have witnessed firsthand.
Inclusion cannot be purchased. It cannot be applied for. It is earned through a sustained record of exceptional legal work and professional standing.
This recognition places YLaw among the top recognized family law firms in British Columbia and marks a significant milestone in the firm’s more than decade-long history of innovation, growth, and results.
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What Is Doyle’s Guide?
What is Doyle’s Guide? Doyle’s Guide is a peer-reviewed legal ranking publication identifying leading lawyers and law firms across Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Singapore. Rankings are based entirely on nominations from other lawyers — not self-nomination or paid placement. Being listed means the legal community itself has vouched for your work.
How does a law firm get listed in Doyle’s Guide? Law firms cannot apply or pay to be listed. Lawyers in the same legal community nominate firms based on direct professional experience: opposing counsel, mediators, and colleagues who have observed the firm’s work firsthand.
Why does a Doyle’s Guide listing matter for clients? It signals that a law firm’s reputation is built on results and peer respect, not advertising. When you hire a Doyle’s Guide-recognized firm, you are hiring one that the broader legal profession trusts.
What YLaw Built And How
YLaw was founded in 2013 by Leena Yousefi with $10,000 in savings and a 200-square-foot office-share space in downtown Vancouver. She had one goal: to build a law firm that actually worked for people not just those who could afford the traditional model, and not just lawyers who fit the traditional mould.
What she built from that beginning is now one of the largest female-owned and female-led law firms in Canada. YLaw has more than 60 employees and operates offices in Yaletown, Langley, and Chilliwack. It has been named to the Globe and Mail’s Top 400 Fastest Growing Companies in Canada seven consecutive times and to the Canadian Business Top 500 Growth list. The firm has been ranked #23 among the fastest growing female-led companies in Canada.
Over more than a decade, YLaw has handled thousands of family law and employment law files across British Columbia — including high-net-worth divorces, complex international matters, precedent-setting court appeals, and sensitive child custody and parenting disputes.
The firm has appeared before the BC Provincial Court, the BC Supreme Court, and the BC Court of Appeal.
A Firm Built Differently
YLaw is not a traditional law firm. It was never meant to be.
Every client file at YLaw is discussed in firm-wide daily morning meetings, where lawyers at every level, from senior counsel to junior associates collaborate on case strategy together. When a client hires one YLaw lawyer, they get the collective thinking of the entire team. That is not a marketing claim. It is how the firm operates every single day.
YLaw’s approach to resolution is equally deliberate. The firm believes in settlement first — pursuing creative, negotiated outcomes that save clients time, money, and emotional cost wherever possible. When litigation is necessary, YLaw is not afraid of it.
Ground Breaking Cases
The firm has a track record of groundbreaking cases and appellate victories that have helped shape British Columbia family law, including:
- Securing the highest family law contempt award in BC history — more than $116,000 in fines plus special costs
- Winning a landmark international child abduction case involving a non-Hague signatory country, setting a new legal precedent for parental rights across borders
- Succeeding on appeal at the BC Court of Appeal in the precedent-setting case of Storey v. Terry, a complex property division matter
- Winning high-net-worth property division cases involving income imputation, bad-faith financial conduct, and complex business assets
A Modern Firm for a Modern Profession
YLaw was built to challenge the profession from the inside.
The firm offers the first free AI app of its kind in the world, the Split, to calculate rights for separating couples for free.
The firm also offers First Trimester Leave, and full pay transparency across all roles. These are structural commitments to building a workplace where lawyers particularly women with families and lawyers from diverse backgrounds, can do their best work without sacrificing everything else.
Leena Yousefi has spoken publicly about building the firm she wished had existed when she started. She has been open about depression, about founding a firm immediately after being called to the bar with limited resources, and about the resistance she faced building something that looked nothing like what a law firm was supposed to look like. What she built instead has been recognized nationally and internationally.
In 2024, Leena self-funded the development of a first-of-its-kind application to help self-represented litigants in BC calculate their family law rights — a direct investment in access to justice that reflects the firm’s core belief that good legal outcomes should not be reserved for those who can afford the traditional model.
YLaw has been profiled in the Globe and Mail, Canadian Business, the National Post, Vancouver Sun, Business in Vancouver, and on BBC and CBC News.
Founder Leena Yousefi was named one of Canada’s Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers, the 2020 Lexpert Rising Star — the only family lawyer in Canada to receive the award that year — and was chosen as one of the Top 50 Change Makers in Canada.
The firm’s own lawyers mirror its standards. Senior lawyer and firm pillar Trudy Hopman has been practising family law since 1991 — more than 33 years — and brings a 99% mediation settlement rate and a record as one of BC’s first accredited Family Law Arbitrators. The firm’s hiring process is deliberate and demanding because the firm’s reputation is built on results.
YLaw serves clients across British Columbia in:
- Divorce and separation
- Mediation and arbitration
- Estate litigation
- Employment law
- Civil Litigation
- Strata Law
- Immigration Law
Speak with a Recognized BC Family Lawyer
Call YLaw at 604-974-9529 or contact us online. Offices in Vancouver, Langley, and Chilliwack.
Related Reading
- Leena Yousefi and Trudy Hopman Named Recommended Family Lawyers in BC — Doyle’s Guide 2026
- Meet the Full YLaw Team
- How to Choose a Family Lawyer in BC
This article is for information only and does not constitute legal advice. It does not create a lawyer–client relationship with YLaw or any of its lawyers. Laws and policies change, and information here may not reflect the most current legal developments. For full details, please contact us to obtain advice about your specific situation.