is lawyer's retaining fee a bill.

Our President keeps asking me If I have gotten a check for the lawyer's retaining fee of $500.00. The lawyer was at our September Board meeting and I asked him if he was going to ssend us a bill so that I can give it to the bookkeeper. (Although not the treasurer) I do assist by making bank deposits and getting checks from the bookkeeper.

Oour President thinks a retaining fee is not a bill and all I have to ask the bookkeepeer to do is generate a check for $500.00. I disagree with her. I don't like to generage a check for anything that does not have a bill to go with it.

Who do you think is correct me or our President?

Thanks for your help.

Bonnie,

We pay our attorney a small fee for being our registered agent.
If we need legal services we are billed for the hours.

We do not keep any attorney on retainer.

No bill, no check. The lawyer needs to send you a bill if he wants your money.

I also say, "no bill, no check". Wouldn't it be more efficient to use your lawyer on a case to case basis as needed?

Bonnie

Negotiating a contract is simply a business deal meaning what are you going to do for me and for how much are you going to charge me. A lawyer is far from the first person needed to do that part especially if renegotiating an existing contract for better terms and/or cost.

Now once deal is agreed upon, having as lwayer look at it might not be a bad idea.

Hope this helps.

After the experience we had with our first BOD, I will never criticize anyone for seeking legal review of a contract.

We have about 300 miles of dirt roads to maintain. When the developer turned things over to the owners, our board found a contractor to do the grading. The contractor and our board negotiated a contract all by themselves even though no one on the board had ever negotiated a business contract in their lives. Dispite the fact that the resulting "contract" was five pages, in essence it said if the association asked the contractor to grade the roads then he would do so at a set fee per mile.

The contract was just a pricing agreement and it covered five years worth of work. Our board then interpretted this document to mean that we had a binding 5-year contract with the grading contractor, even though he had no authority to do any work without a specific request from the association. The "contract" was just an agreement to make contracts in the future. The contract did not unconditionally obligate the contractor to do any work nor did it unconditionally obligate the association to pay the contractor.

When the relationship soured later on, the board kept on hiring this contractor in the belief that they had no other choice. The contractor had plenty of other clients and gave us the cold shoulder. Our roads were not graded but the board sought no other contractors in the belief that they were bound to the first one. It took four years for the board to figure out that the contractor had taken a powder and I do not think anyone on the board ever figured out what was wrong with their contract.