Are you a Lawyer or Paralegal in or around Burlington and/or Hamilton Ontario?

You haven't specified the process you're using. When you're asking procedural questions, that's kind of important, but I'm going to guess you're talking about Small Claims Court.

Proof of service of the statement of claim doesn't really matter once a statement of defence is filed. I don't usually file an affidavit of service in respect of the statement of claim itself until and unless I seek default judgment, which I can't do in most cases after a defence is filed. (There are rare cases where a defence may be struck and default judgment can be sought afterwards, and it is technically conceivable that the Court may insist on proof of service in such a case. So you should still get the affidavit of service drafted and sworn, and keep it in your file, just in case.)

If it's Small Claims Court, the documents you received from the Court with the statement of defence will indicate the scheduling of a "Settlement Conference", and will tell you what you need to do in preparation for it. In particular, they will include directions that you need to serve and file all documents upon which you need to rely, and a list of proposed witnesses (the Court probably sent you a form, failing which you can find it online easily enough), in advance of the Settlement Conference. Some Deputy Judges are sticklers for compliance with these requirements, and will award costs against you if you fail to do so.

That being said, the Small Claims Court itself has good guides available online, and they usually tell you what you need to know in terms of process in the correspondence they give you, if you read through it carefully enough.

I can't tell you what paralegal rates run, but I will tell you that you have to be careful with paralegals: Some of them are very good...but many of them are not, with absolutely no grounding in the applicable legal principles.

The cost you've identified for lawyers would probably be a reasonable expectation for an hourly rate in the Hamilton/Burlington area. Experienced lawyers would be higher, but you might be able to find a junior lawyer more cheaply. Or even better, if you can find a firm with an articling student, that could save you some money.

I should highlight, because you didn't note it in the question, that these numbers would be *per hour*: In other words, if you hire a lawyer charging $200 per hour, who meets with you for 2 hours, spends 4 hours reviewing your documents and preparing your case/documents for filing with the Court, and then spends 4 hours going to the Settlement Conference with you, then you'll get a bill in the ballpark of $2000 plus HST plus disbursements...and if it hasn't settled, then you'll still need to go to a trial, which will cost even more. Time expenditures could easily run higher, depending on the nature of the file: My point is that it's expensive.

And even if you won at trial, you likely wouldn't get more to compensate you for legal fees than 15% of the amount of the claim. The last Small Claims Court trial I did myself ran a day and a half, and even though I was only retained after the Settlement Conference my client was still billed an amount approaching 5 digits, on a claim worth just a little over ten grand in the first place. Won the full amount of the claim, plus over three grand for costs because we'd made reasonable offers to settle, but it was still a bigger win for the law firm than the client.