Bench & Bar March/April 2025

CORNER The practice of law is a highly regulated profession under the super vision of the Kentucky Supreme Court, and lawyers must comply with the Court’s current Rules and its current interpretation of Ken tucky law. While “double dipping” is now clearly prohibited, the Court did not define “double-dipping.” It is also clear that lawyers are entitled to charge a reasonable fee for all their services and Rule 1.5(a) establishes a framework for determining what constitutes a reasonable fee. 3

normal attorney client relationship. However, a higher rate would not apply to the other attorneys in your firm because they would not be serving as a fiduciary. Said another way, Rule 1.5(a) provides many factors for determining what is a reasonable fee and the lawyer who serves as a fiduciary may charge a higher hourly rate when assuming the personal risk and the responsibility to manage the assets of a decedent’s estate, trust, or other entity. You also ask if you may elect to charge your client the greater of a standard fiduciary fee in accordance with Kentucky law or a legal fee based on your firm’s normal hourly rates. Rule 1.5 provides that fees must be adequately disclosed to the client including any changes in the basis or rate of those fees. In general my advice would be “yes, you could charge the higher of either a fiduciary fee or an attorney’s fee,” however, in this matter you have had a long history of charging your client on an hourly rate basis, and your fee agreement does not contain an explanation of how a fiduciary fee would be calculated. Hence, it would now be inappropriate for you to change your billing methodology absent court approval.

If your fee is to be based on an hourly rate, it is my opinion that when you serve as a fiduciary and as attorney you may consider the additional duties and risks that you will undertake in performing such dual services. All attorneys have fiduciary obligations to their clients; but when the scope of the representation includes services that carry additional fiduciary obligations, the attorney may right fully charge a higher hourly rate. For example, a lawyer who acts as an executor or trustee has fiduciary duties to the beneficiaries because they are the real parties of interest, and the lawyer has an independent duty to them that does not normally arise out of the

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