Charging Lien Covers Pre-Suit Legal Work But Won’t Secure Fees for Case Origination

A law firm may assert a charging lien to collect payment for the “pre-suit legal work it performed” on a lawsuit that ultimately was filed by different counsel, the Georgia Court of Appeals held May 6 (Tolson v. Sistrunk, 2015 BL 131661, Ga. Ct. App., A15A0578, 5/6/15).

Judge Anne Elizabeth Barnes acknowledged that a statutory charging lien in Georgia “does not attach until a lawsuit has been filed on the client’s behalf.” However, she said, “nothing in the statutory language restricts its application to a limited class of attorneys who worked on the lawsuit when it was ...