People v. March.
No. 25PDJ78. 12/19/2025. Stipulation to Discipline.
February 1, 2026
The Presiding Disciplinary Judge approved the parties’ stipulation to discipline and suspended Kelly Rebecca March (attorney registration number 41470) for six months, with 30 days to be served and the remainder to be stayed upon March’s successful completion of a two-year period of probation, with conditions. The suspension took effect on December 19, 2025.
In late January 2025, a purported nonprofit civil rights organization advocating for children hired March as of counsel. The executive director of the organization, its sole owner, is not a licensed lawyer in any jurisdiction. The organization is not a law firm and is not authorized to provide legal services. Two grandparents retained the organization to secure visitation rights with their grandchildren, whose parents obtained a divorce in Colorado. March provided legal services to the grandparents as part of her employment relationship with the organization. The executive director paid March for her services through electronic transfers drawn from the grandparents’ fees. The grandparents did not give informed consent for the organization to pay March.
March did not consult or affiliate with an experienced family law lawyer in connection with the representation. Under CRS § 14-10-124.4, she initiated a new legal proceeding by filing a petition for visitation on the grandparents’ behalf. The petition’s caption included March’s name and contact information, along with the name and contact information for the lawyer for the children’s father as well as the children’s mother’s name and contact information, even though the mother was represented by counsel. None of these people in fact joined in the petition. The father’s lawyer moved to strike her name from the caption.
The petition claimed that the grandparents had filed no prior requests for visitation. The petition also acknowledged that even though intervening in an existing case would have been standard procedure, the grandparents sought the court’s review outside of an existing case. March did not cite any authority in the petition that filing a new action was legally appropriate. Indeed, the statute requires that visitation requests be filed in an existing case involving allocation of parental rights. With the petition, March filed an amicus curiae brief, which was drafted by the executive director and contained legal citation. The court denied the petition, finding no legal basis to proceed outside the parents’ dissolution action. The court also noted March’s failure to disclose that the grandparents had twice sought visitation in the dissolution case in the two previous years.
March then moved on the grandparents’ behalf to intervene in the dissolution case; she believed she could file such a motion, notwithstanding the grandparents’ recent prior visitation requests and language in the statute limiting such requests to one request every two years.
Through the conduct described above, March violated Colo. RPC 1.1 (a lawyer must competently represent a client); Colo. RPC 1.8(f) (a lawyer may not accept compensation for representation from someone other than the client unless the client gives informed consent); Colo. RPC 5.4(c) (a lawyer may not permit a person who employs the lawyer to render legal services for another to direct the lawyer’s professional judgment in rendering such legal services); and Colo. RPC 5.5(a)(3) (a lawyer may not assist a person who is not authorized to practice law to perform any activity that constitutes the unauthorized practice of law).