Editor’s Note: Law Week Colorado edits court opinion summaries for style and, when necessary, length.
According to the opinion, in March 2020, Kelli Riley entered a contingency fee agreement to represent a client in an employment law matter. The fee agreement entitled Riley to 35% of her client’s gross recovery from the case. Under the fee agreement’s termination clause, the client would pay Riley her fees incurred in the case, including reimbursement of costs and expenses, if Riley or the client terminated the representation before the case was resolved. The termination clause provided the fees would be payable only from the client’s gross recovery from the case and limited the total fee to the amount Riley would have earned on contingency. The fee agreement didn’t contain a provision addressing late payments or the accrual of interest if a payment was late.
In July 2021, approximately four months before the parties were scheduled to mediate, Riley withdrew from the case. In August 2021, while the case was ongoing, she attempted to obtain payment from her former client for $28,747.65, the total amount Riley had invoiced in the matter. The client made a payment that month and Riley sent the client a new invoice for $25,678 in September 2021. Later that month, Riley sent her former client two invoices showing late payment fees at an 18% interest rate.
Meanwhile, the former client obtained new counsel and settled the case for $25,000 in November 2021. The following January, Riley unsuccessfully moved for entry of judgment for an attorney’s lien in the amount of $28,747.65 plus interest at an 18% annual rate, according to the opinion.
The Presiding Disciplinary Judge approved the parties’ stipulation to discipline and publicly censured Riley effective Oct. 13.
People v. Brianna Lee Schaefer
According to the opinion, shortly after joining a law firm in 2016, Brianna Schaefer began moonlighting as local counsel in Colorado for a different law firm based in Kansas. Schaefer later purchased the first law firm with three other lawyers and executed a partnership agreement with them in July 2019.
The partnership agreement required all money they received for legal work must be paid or credited to the partnership and all clients were clients of the partnership rather than clients of any individual lawyer, unless otherwise approved by the partners. Schaefer didn’t inform the other partners of her work with the Kansas law firm even though the work violated the terms of the partnership agreement, the opinion added.
Later, in August 2020, when providing information for the first firm’s malpractice insurance renewal, Schaefer replied “No” when asked if any covered lawyer was an employee of any organization, entity or government body other than the firm. Then, in February 2022, a court clerk sent a docket sheet to the first firm regarding one of Schaefer’s cases with the Kansas firm.
The lawyer who received the clerk’s email — and who earlier had received a similar email from the same clerk’s office — forwarded it to Schaefer and a paralegal and then followed up with another email that stated, “Never mind, wrong Bri Schaefer again! I’ll let the clerk know AGAIN!” A few minutes later, the lawyer emailed Schaefer and the paralegal again, asking, “Unless this is [Schaefer’s] case?” Schaefer didn’t reply to the email. Lawyers with the first firm eventually searched the court dockets in the Denver metro area and discovered Schaefer had filed tens, if not hundreds, of cases for the Kansas firm’s clients during the preceding few years.
The Presiding Disciplinary Judge approved the parties’ stipulation to discipline and publicly censured Schaefer effective Oct. 13.