Baker Law Group, PLLC

Focus and practice areas

The firm's work covers eight fields: civil litigation, personal injury, real estate, business law, trusts and estates, criminal defense, family law and employment law. That range puts transactional deals and courtroom disputes under the same roster, so one office can cover both sides of a matter. Baker Law Group, PLLC states this list on both its home page and its practice pages, and the detail behind each label fills out the picture.

The matters it names

On the litigation side, the site points to automobile accidents, defamation, construction defects, and landlord and tenant disputes. The business and real estate work takes in mergers and acquisitions, partnership disputes, contracts, zoning questions and property transactions. These are the kinds of matters that move between a negotiating table and a courtroom depending on how talks go, and the firm lists lawyers on each side of that line.

Estate and family matters fill out the rest of the list. The firm handles probate, guardianships and trust litigation, along with divorce, child custody and child support. Its criminal work names DUI defense and white collar cases. Employment services cover contracts, employee handbooks, severance disputes and employer compliance, which points to work for employers as much as individuals.

The firm also identifies intellectual property, securities and insurance litigation. Two further fields track Colorado law as it shifts: cannabis and psilocybin. In my opinion, that pairing is worth flagging, because both areas depend on state rules that keep changing.

How the team is built

The firm states that it has 24 attorneys and more than 100 years of combined legal experience. Jereme Baker is the owner and managing member. His practice covers real estate, business and corporate law, estate planning and probate, and he has advised small and medium-sized businesses in both in-house and outside general counsel roles. That mix of roles gives him a view of a company from the inside and from external counsel.

Titles map the structure. Below Baker sit members, team leads and a group of senior associate attorneys. Brian Petz holds the title of senior associate attorney and member, and his work centers on business law, probate, estate planning and real estate. He has handled trust and estate administration and litigated probate matters involving fiduciary appointments, removal, surcharge, common-law marriage and heirship, which is a detailed slice of probate practice.

Two attorneys lead teams. Tyler Gurnee is the litigation team lead and a member. He grew up in Virginia Beach and studied history and classical languages at the University of Virginia, with a focus on Latin. Ashley White is a team lead and member, and she brings more than a decade of criminal defense litigation experience across different levels of criminal offenses and stages of proceedings in Colorado. White's decade of trial work sits alongside Gurnee's litigation lead role, so the firm keeps two of its team-lead titles on the disputes side.

Who handles which matters

The senior associate roster shows how the firm divides its subject areas. Stephen Kahley brings more than 20 years in real estate law, business law and commercial transactions, and his work includes contract negotiation tied to clients' business goals. Christopher Pike handles business matters plus commercial and residential real estate litigation and transactions, and he negotiates agreements and settlements for both.

Estate planning runs deep on the bench. Jennifer Schwab practices in estate planning, probate, business law and real estate, and she adds cannabis law and psilocybin law to that work. Jennifer Landry keeps a tighter focus on estate planning, probate and elder law. Both fall within the trusts and estates side of the firm, and together they give it two attorneys dedicated to that area.

The litigation bench

Robert Thomas has more than 17 years of litigation experience across large and small firms, and he concentrates on employer-side labor and employment litigation, dispute resolution and compliance. Steven Klenda represents clients in multi-year and multi-party lawsuits, and his work reaches election and public policy litigation in Colorado. Both handle the kind of extended disputes that run for years.

Two lawyers carry deep court backgrounds. Sean Thomson has more than 17 years in Colorado's criminal justice system. He began by litigating before the Colorado Court of Appeals and Colorado Supreme Court, later represented criminal defendants in Denver District Court, and served as a magistrate judge in Denver County Court and the Arapahoe Combined Courts. Jenya Berino practices in residential real estate purchases and development, civil litigation, construction defect cases and real estate disputes. She was admitted to the Colorado Bar in 2015 and the Vermont Bar, now inactive, in 2018.

Reach across the region

The firm runs offices in three Colorado cities: Colorado Springs, Denver and Greenwood Village. The Colorado Springs office anchors the firm as its first listed address, and the Denver presence lines up with the courts where several of its litigators have appeared. Three offices across the Front Range put the firm near where many Colorado disputes are filed.

The stated service area covers seven states. Alongside Colorado, the firm lists Kansas, Nevada, Texas, Idaho, New Mexico and South Carolina. A reach that wide usually depends on attorneys holding bar admissions in more than one state, and that fits the multi-jurisdiction detail in Berino's biography. For a client outside Colorado, the practical question is which attorney holds a license in the relevant state, and the individual biographies are where that answer sits.

How these matters usually proceed

The firm's four matched practice areas each follow a known path, and the path helps a reader weigh the biographies above. Civil litigation in Colorado opens with a complaint and answer, moves into discovery where both sides exchange documents and take depositions, and often reaches a settlement conference before a judge sets a trial date. A case can close at any of those stages. Steven Klenda, who handles multi-party lawsuits, works across that full timeline.

Criminal, family and injury cases

Criminal defense follows a separate track. A case opens with arrest and a first appearance, sets bond, and then works through arraignment, motions and plea discussions ahead of any trial. Ashley White and Sean Thomson both carry criminal experience, and Thomson's time as a magistrate judge gives him a view of the process from the bench. That vantage point matters in plea talks, where the likely posture of the court shapes the advice a defense lawyer gives.

Family law in Colorado centers on parenting and support. A divorce with children settles parenting time, decision-making authority and child support, and Colorado courts often send parents to mediation before a contested hearing. Custody and support orders can return to court later if circumstances change. The firm names all three of these matters, which tells a client the work carries past the initial decree.

Personal injury runs on its own clock. A claim from an automobile accident turns first on liability and then on damages, which means medical records, lost income and the limits of the relevant insurance policy. Most such claims settle through negotiation with an insurer, and the ones that hold out enter the same civil process described above. Colorado sets a filing deadline for these claims, so timing carries weight from the first meeting.

What the record shows

The firm publishes a title, a set of practice fields and a biography for each attorney it profiles, which lets a reader line up a matter with a person. The site does not list a founding year, so the firm's age stays open. What the biographies do carry is concrete detail: stated years in practice for Kahley, Thomas and Thomson, and the specific Colorado courts where Thomson has appeared.

As a reviewer, I read the roster as the firm's clearest evidence. It names each lawyer and sets out the fields that lawyer works in. For several attorneys it also states how long they have practiced, which a prospective client can check against the public bar record. The roster spans transactional and courtroom work, so a single intake can route a client to a business lawyer or a trial attorney depending on the matter. The firm counts 24 attorneys in total, and its about page carries biographies for the lawyers it profiles.