PT3M16S
“in Colorado you should know exactly at what point your attorney is taking money from the trust account where you put money in to cover the cost of your case there should be a retainer agreement that you signed and it should list out very specifically at what stage in the case the attorney is allowed to withdraw that money now for those of you who aren't aware what happened in Colorado when you are working with a flat fee case which is what most criminal defense attorneys do is we as the criminal defense attorney take your money that you pay it and put it in a trust account and then we bill from that trust account so when the money is in the trust account it is your money still belongs to you”
“we're in our retainer agreement the Colorado Supreme Court has said that we have to say in our retainer agreements at what point we get to take money out now if your attorney is not giving you a retainer agreement or you don't have a copy of your retainer agreement that is a huge red flag because number one you need to be aware of exactly what you're paying for and when and number two that is a violation of their ethical obligations to you client”
“I'm going to write Law Group what we do is we do it in stages so depending on the stage of the case we're allowed to take a certain percentage of the retainer agreement we are very clear with our clients that if we don't do a certain stage of the case and that stage doesn't go we get that money back to the client because any money sitting in the trust account still belongs to you the client”
“when you pay an attorney let's say you have a DUI case and you pay let's say five thousand dollars per in the UI you pay that five thousand dollars it's supposed to be put directly into a trust account let's say the next day you say nope I don't like this attorney I'm going with someone else you better be getting a significant portion of that money back because they do not earn the money in full when you pay them it has to be put in a trust account it has to be in that trust account for your protection”
“the last red flag that I'll say is if you get a retainer agreement that says hey you pay me this money and I earn it all as soon as you pay it that is not ethically allowed in Colorado so let another attorney know immediately if you have a retainer agreement that says that because that is not allowed in the state of Colorado they cannot just take all of your money up front and not do any work to earn it”
“so when the money is in the trust account it is your money still belongs to you”
“now if your attorney is not giving you a retainer agreement or you don't have a copy of your retainer agreement that is a huge red flag”
“the only time the money doesn't belong to you is the client is once the attorney is able to pull the money from trust account in other words bill against the retainer and earn the money”
“as always I can only tell you how we operate a right Law Group because I don't work in other firms”