Serving Family Law and Criminal Defense Clients In Denver & Greenwood Village, But Also All Major Metro Areas, I-70 Mountains, and Northeastern Colorado
The origin story of Colorado Lawyer Team (COLawTeam) started in 2015, when Justie Nicol started her solo law firm, Nicol Law Offices.
Since then, multiple team members, an entirely new practice area (or three), and several attorneys have been added.
What was once Nicol Law Offices is now COLawTeam, a full-fledged criminal defense, family law, employment, and civil litigation practice built to be the law firm of the future.
Early in her legal career, Justie Nicol looked around at the legal community and realized efficient use of technology and a feminine perspective could be strong pillars of a new type of law firm. Currently, COLawTeam is an all-woman team by happy accident. Our team knows what it means to strive for work-life balance and flexibility in practice. Many of us are parents, and we juggle many hats. We understand that our clients usually have jobs and commitments throughout the day, so they can’t be available for calls with their lawyers at the drop of a hat. So, it’s no surprise they call their lawyer’s office on weekends and evenings. Our COLawTeam phones are manned 24 hours a day for just this reason!
Call 970-670-0738 any time day or night to make an appointment to speak with an attorney.
The group of attorneys at Colorado Lawyer Team are hard-working, experienced attorneys, with tons of knowledge in the law. Moreover, we have a wealth of prior experience to draw on when representing clients. For example, Justie’s undergrad degree in Accounting, which means that the firm is better prepared than almost every other small firm in terms of understanding what it takes to run the “business side” of a law firm efficiently and effectively. We have a full staff of attorneys, paralegals, and legal assistants ready to join your legal team today!
COLawTeam is passionate about giving back and setting a good example for other attorneys. Justie Nicol has served on the Board of Directors at Homeward Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to eradicating homelessness in Northern Colorado. She has lectured at area colleges like DU Law, DU’s Graduate School of Social Work, Regis University, etc. Justie regularly teaches other lawyers on lawyer well-being, technology and AI, and client service on an international basis. And that’s just ONE of our attorneys! Each of our attorneys is active in the bar association and legal community, experienced with a variety of nonprofits, and is always mentoring and volunteering within the community.
Criminal Defense
COLawTeam founder, Justie Nicol, has been practicing criminal defense for many years, and she cut her teeth trying cases as a Deputy District Attorney and by working for the ACLU prior to that. In fact, Justie worked on class action lawsuits for the ACLU where she got to work closely with prisoners incarcerated in a for-profit prison to protect their constitutional rights. Justie has used this experience to build a criminal law practice and train all of our COLawTeam attorneys about how best to represent clients. All of our COLawTeam attorneys realize that it is important to support our clients and their families, and have built whole defense teams of experts, investigators, social workers, mitigation specialists, and others who can help make sure that a criminal case isn’t the end of the world. Although there are several women who practice in this high-intensity area of law, there are not many women-owned/ women-led criminal defense firms with whole teams and networks available to clients to help them through their respective situations.
Colorado Lawyer Team is focused on doing what’s best for clients holistically, and not just pleading your case out to move onto the next one as quickly as possible. Being women, our attorneys generally tend to be more empathetic to a client’s problems, more creative in their solutions, and more persistent in court.
READ MORE ABOUT CRIMINAL DEFENSE
Employment Law
Perhaps the biggest legal question left unanswered for many criminal and family law clients after working with COLawTeam, was what would the effect of a conviction or relocation or other legal issue have on their jobs. Post-COVID, the impact of legal cases on employment is even more pronounced. Justie and the team at COLawTeam wanted to support existing and future clients with their employment concerns. In 2023, we began offering employment support and legal services to consumers. Again–although Justie supervises the division–experienced and awesome attorneys and staff drive this new initiative forward (some teammates even have years of their own HR experience prior to attending law school!).
COLawTeam offers employment consulting services to both employers or employees, as well as litigation in many areas of employment law. From severance packages to unlawful terminations, from outright discrimination to hostile workplaces, we can help employees with many legal issues including representation with the EEOC. For employers, there are often small changes that businesses can make that have a large impact on both creating a better workplace for their employees and protecting the company. Our attorneys are happy to listen to employers to help craft solutions specific to your business, as well as your budget. For example, we will review and revise your company’s employee handbook for a very affordable flat fee which can save you thousands of dollars in litigation down the road. Be proactive and contact COLawTeam today!
Family Law
After years of running a successful criminal defense practice, Justie realized there was a lot of overlap in the questions our attorneys were getting from clients who also struggled with family law issues. COLawTeam decided to start offering family law services and immediately set out to collaborate with leaders in the industry like Hello Divorce, local nonprofits like Project Safeguard, and other family law firms.
COLawTeam also realizes that a family law case can be extremely expensive. That’s why we try to keep legal costs down for our clients by offering unbundled legal services for discreet parts of a case or certain court appearances. We also are offering limited scope legal fees which are more of our DIY-based services and like having a lawyer in your back pocket. At this time, we cannot offer financing through our third party lenders for family law cases, but we often work with clients to empower them to do more of their own legal work using these other alternative fee arrangements.
Although, Justie Nicol oversees the family law division and handles many of the intakes, much of the day-to-day work is done by true family-law attorneys (some who are even CFI’s appointed by judges as court experts in their own right!). True to our name–the COLawTeam family law division is made up of a great team of people who do the work and genuinely care about their clients.
Civil Litigation
The COLawTeam attorneys are extremely comfortable in court and in front of a judge. For years, Justie has held a contract with Project Safeguard helping with their civil restraining orders, for example, sometimes handling as many as 5 hearings in one day. In addition, our attorneys have worked as public defender overflow attorneys, and have prepared as many as 18 trials for court on the same day. Moreover, our attorneys have experience with a variety of other civil litigation topics for things like replevin and contempt, not to mention complex discovery cases. Because of this experience in other areas of litigation, we were regularly asked to help in “regular” lawsuit types of cases.
With the addition of the new attorneys and our expansion in 2023, it only made sense to include outright civil litigation as a practice area. Small businesses and start-ups often don’t have the legal budget necessary to engage in drawn-out litigation. Beginning in 2023, COLawTeam can now assist with contractual disputes, demand letters, and general civil litigation on a flat fee or hourly basis (contingency fees are not available and personal injury cases are not accepted at this time). Contact our team of qualified professionals at COLawTeam today for help with your lawsuit!
How We Can Help You!
Getting an Experienced Attorney to Handle Your Case Can Create Peace of Mind
Your legal team should not treat you as a number or just a file full of papers. Our clients get personalized attention every step of the way. They can book an update call any time they want by using our automated calendaring system. Our phones are manned 24 hours a day. Each lawyer has support staff dedicated to their clients to ensure that even if the attorney isn’t available, staff will be.
We aren’t just looking to cash in on your case. For example, we don’t want to just plead your case out at the first hearing and move on to the next case or client in our practice. In family law cases, we have regular meetings with clients both virtually and in person to make sure that we’re meeting clients’ expectations. As a firm, we’re committed to Access to Justice and are excited to offer alternative fee arrangement packages in both criminal defense and family law matters (with the help of Hello Divorce). We often field client questions that have very little if anything to do with their cases but are vitally important to their lives and well-being. That–and more–is why we are proud to say many clients have chosen to refer their friends and family members to us.
Your Case is Not Less Important Because You
Have Less Money to Spend on an Attorney!
We understand the value of hard work, and our time representing folks suffering financial hardships helped to shape Colorado Lawyer Team’s financial policies. We are proud to say we help those that cannot afford high-priced lawyers (hint: higher legal fees do not mean better lawyers). By going with Colorado Lawyer Team, we can keep costs down, and we utilize the most recent technology to stay in close communication with our clients. We also offer external financing for several types of flat fee cases and we are always looking for ways to make quality legal representation more affordable for our clients.