For much of the past two decades, refinance closing work in Canada has moved away from traditional legal practices and toward centralized providers built around speed, scale, and cost efficiency.
That shift made sense in a lower-volume, more predictable mortgage environment. But the market entering 2026 looks very different.
Nearly two million Canadian mortgages are expected to renew before the end of 2027, with many borrowers facing materially higher rates than the ones they locked in during the pandemic-era lending cycle. As refinance activity rises, lenders and brokers are preparing for a wave of files that may not be as simple or standardized as the industry has grown accustomed to treating them.
For lawyers and notaries, that matters.
Refinance work is legal work. It involves the discharge and registration of mortgages, borrower advice, timing-sensitive payouts, title review, and the management of issues that can become complicated quickly when a file does not fit neatly into a centralized workflow.
According to Marco Polsinelli, Head of International Operations for Stewart Title, the market is beginning to recognize that again.
Based in Toronto, Polsinelli oversees Stewart Title’s operations outside the United States, including Canada, the U.K. and Australia. Before joining Stewart, he practised law with a focus on commercial and residential conveyancing, giving him firsthand experience with the legal work now coming back into focus as refinance volumes rise.
Today, he is seeing lenders, mortgage brokers, and legal professionals reassess long-held assumptions about who is best positioned to handle refinance transactions at scale. Centralized closing models still have a role, but higher volumes, more complex files, and growing expectations around transparency, communication, and professional advice are creating an opening for lawyers and notaries to compete again.
The timing is notable. Standard real estate transaction volumes remain below historic norms in many markets, leaving real estate practices looking for revenue opportunities in areas they are already equipped to serve. At the same time, technology has changed the economics of refinance work, narrowing the gap that once made centralized providers difficult for individual practices to challenge.
LegalTech.ca spoke with Polsinelli about why the refinance market is opening back up to lawyers and notaries, where centralized closing models are showing strain, and what legal practices should be doing now if they want to compete for this work.
For the past two decades, much of the refinance closing market has moved away from traditional legal practices. What changed, and why is that dynamic starting to shift now?
MP: It is worth starting with something that I think gets lost in this conversation. A refinance is not an administrative transaction. It involves the discharge and registration of mortgages under provincial property law, and the decisions embedded in that process carry real consequences for the borrower signing the documents. The legal profession is not trying to reclaim something that was taken from it. This work drifted away from where it professionally and legally belongs, and what we are seeing now is the market starting to correct for that.
There has been a presumption in the space that the trend toward centralized closing would continue indefinitely. What we have found in conversations over the last couple of years is that the centralized closing model is good for certain things, but it is actually not great for everything.
What we are discovering is that many of the stakeholders in this space are actively looking for a different way to approach refinance transactions. On the lending side, that includes the big institutional banks that drive a significant volume of business in Canada, monoline lenders, and the mix of private lenders that have become increasingly prominent. Each of those groups has quite different pain points around the process. Mortgage brokers are a critical part of that picture as well. They sit in the middle of these transactions and they feel those pain points directly when files do not move the way they should.
That is one of the things we have been working hard to understand: exactly what that landscape looks like across those different lender types, and how lawyers can address those pain points differently from what the centralized closing model currently offers.
With nearly two million Canadian mortgages expected to renew before the end of 2027, what are you hearing from lenders and brokers about their capacity concerns or service expectations?
MP: This is a key point. It is really critical to why the potential for re-entry at scale for lawyers in the refinance market is relevant right now. Volume is part of it, but honestly the more telling signal is the quality conversation. Lenders and brokers are not just asking whether a model can handle two million renewals. They are asking what happens when something goes wrong inside that volume, like when a file is more complicated than expected, when a borrower cannot get a straight answer or when a timeline slips and someone has to explain why.
What we are hearing is that lenders and brokers want transparency around the process, the ability to execute within timelines that actually work for their borrowers and quality of advice. And that last point matters more than it used to. Borrowers refinancing in today’s rate environment are often making consequential decisions: whether to lock in, how to structure the payout what the timing implications are. They deserve professional judgment, not administrative processing. Lenders are hearing about it when that does not happen.
That is where lawyers are particularly well positioned to excel in this space. Although the process of refinancing has become commoditized over the years, many lenders and brokers are seeing that those elements are not being appropriately addressed in current models. They are actively open to re-exploring legal professionals because of the unique position lawyers occupy in providing accountable, actionable advice on these transactions.
Centralized closing services have historically won on speed, consistency and cost. Where are you seeing those models show strain in today’s refinance environment?
MP: One of the things that has become obvious over the last few years is that many files once identified as routine or simple have actually become more complex. There are a number of segments within the refinance space like title transfers, reverse mortgages and Power of Attorney’s that touch a whole range of life events that are actually quite compliance-intensive.
Take a file where a lien appears mid-review, or where a borrower’s ownership structure is unusual, or where there is a coordinated payout with tight timing. In a centralized workflow, that file has nowhere to go. It gets flagged, often reassigned to someone who does not have the history, and the borrower ends up without a clear answer on timing. The lender absorbs per-diem interest costs and a service experience they did not anticipate.
Those are precisely the files where lawyers excel: where a single professional can manage title review through payout without the file getting reassigned or stalled. The centralized model was not built for that kind of complexity. Lenders and brokers are realizing that when those files land in a centralized workflow, the process breaks down. That is the strain we are seeing, and it is opening the door for legal professionals to re-enter the conversation.
How have technology and workflow tools changed the business case for lawyers and notaries who may want to re-enter or expand their refinance work?
MP: This is a critical point. Twenty years ago lawyers did not have access to the workflows and streamlined file management tools that they now do. When there was that great migration of refi transactions to the centralized model, lawyers simply were not equipped to compete on a technology basis. The tools that made centralized services fast and scalable were not available to individual practices in the same way. That is a large part of why this business moved in the direction it did.
What has changed fundamentally is that those tools are now widely available and widely adopted at a practice level. Digital intake, streamlined file management, end-to-end coordination from title search through payout – these are no longer the exclusive infrastructure of large, centralized operations. The technology that exists in just about every law firm today has made it much easier to work around the challenges that existed 20 years ago and that caused so much of this business to leave the legal profession in the first place.
What that means practically is that lawyers can now offer the transparency and execution on timelines that lenders and brokers are asking for. A legal practice with the right tools can confirm receipt, flag issues early, give an accurate read on timing and move a standard file in days. The efficiency gap that once made the status quo argument credible has closed. That is a fundamentally different competitive position than where lawyers stood when the centralized model took hold decades ago.
For legal professionals who stepped back from refinance files years ago, what misconceptions might they have about the time, cost or complexity of handling that work today?
MP: I was not that long ago in practice myself and I had misconceptions about refinance files when I first went back to practice. What I found was a notion that lawyers had to compete only on price, and that the centralized closing model was effectively a barrier to entry that they could not breach.
What I found was that yes, price is important. But it is not, perhaps, even the most important factor. What lenders, brokers and borrowers alike are actually often most interested in beyond price are things that lawyers can control even more effectively: speed of response, efficiency around communication and the ability to know where a file is and keep it moving.
These are all things that lawyers and their staff are able to do. So what I would suggest to lawyers exploring this opportunity is yes, consider your price point as that is an obvious area where they have to be somewhat competitive. But you do not want to compete only on price. What you really want to do in this space is show the value proposition on the service and speed side of the equation.
What are lenders and mortgage brokers looking for now when they evaluate closing partners, and how can legal practices better position themselves for that work?
MP: We have been speaking to quite a lot of lenders and brokers because we really wanted to understand whether there was a role for lawyers to basically regain this business at scale. We came back with a full range of learnings about what motivates lenders and brokers.
Many brokers we have spoken to have been exposed to the centralized model for so long they did not really think there were other options available to them. And so they were just accepting certain pain points. You can imagine we were somewhat puzzled saying, well, there actually are other options.
To answer your question directly: what we heard consistently from lenders and brokers is that they want reliability on communication and timing, and confidence that a file with complexity will not become a problem they have to manage themselves. That is the baseline. Beyond that, there is a real appetite for bespoke service on files where the borrower relationship matters, like high-value clients and complex ownership structures. These are situations where a broker has built trust with a borrower and does not want that borrower lost in a workflow they cannot see into.
For legal practices, the positioning question is straightforward: be specific. Not a general offer to do refinance work, but a clear conversation about the files you handle well and what the experience looks like when something unexpected comes up. That specificity is what earns trust with lenders and brokers. And the practices that are having those conversations now, before the expected wave of high refinance activity fully crests, will find an audience that is more receptive than they might expect and be significantly better positioned than those who wait.
Standard real estate transaction volumes remain below normal in many markets. How meaningful could refinance work be as a revenue recovery opportunity for real estate law practices?
MP: The short-term opportunity is real and I do not want to minimize it. Nearly two million renewals before the end of 2027 is a significant volume. Refinances will comprise a meaningful percentage of that volume, and practices that engage now will capture work that practices sitting on the sidelines will not. That is a meaningful near-term revenue story on its own. But what I would say to the legal community is: do not see this only as a short-term answer. The opportunity should not just be a temporary one.
Refinances are always going to be part of this business. If you are entering this space, see it for more than just the next six months. This is a part of your practice for the next six or sixteen years. The lenders and brokers who get turned on to a legal-led model and have a good experience are going to want that model available to them consistently. They are not looking for a closing partner who shows up during an expected wave of high refinance activity and disappears when purchase volumes recover. They are looking for a relationship.
That is really where the long-term value is. The practices that commit to this space, that invest in the processes and staffing to handle these transactions consistently, that build referral relationships with brokers and local bank branches now – they are building a pipeline that will generate work well into the future. Let’s be honest: it requires some work upfront. But these relationships last, and every refinance client is also an opportunity to cross-serve across a whole range of other legal needs. Practices thinking about refis as a customer acquisition opportunity rather than individual transactions are the ones who will look back on this time period as the moment they rebuilt their book.
For a lawyer or notary considering whether to re-engage with refinance work, what should they be doing now rather than waiting for the broader real estate market to rebound?
MP: The first thing I would say is this: you do not need a new value proposition. The skills and professional obligations that make a lawyer or notary the right closing partner for a complex refinance file are the same ones you have been building throughout your practice. What this moment requires is visibility, organization and being in the room when lenders and brokers are reconsidering their arrangements.
Secondly, learn from your colleagues who are actually doing it and doing it well. There is plenty of refinance volume for legal practices everywhere, and there is an ability to chip off slowly but surely from the centralized models. Do not consider this a loss leader to pursue. It is bigger than just the refi file; it is an opportunity to get a new client that you can now cross-serve across so many other opportunities.
So it is really a question of thinking about it from client acquisition perspective rather than just individual transactions. The legal community really should identify this as something they are interested in doing for the long term. It is going to require some work, but it is work is going to be rewarding. And ultimately, because these relationships will last for quite some time, through the next cycle and beyond, the opportunity is now.