Colin Kirkpatrick joined the Firm in 2015. Colin’s primary focus is land use and planning, subdivision law, environmental review, real estate transactions, and public works construction contracts. Colin works closely with the Firm’s client-cities’ planning, public works and engineering departments and divisions preparing complex conditions of approval and mitigation measures associated with various land use entitlements. Colin also drafts numerous development-related agreements, including without limitation, statutory development agreements, subdivision improvement agreements, indemnification agreements, easement agreements, and restrictive covenants. Colin also routinely drafts ordinances, resolutions, policies, procedures, and staff reports regarding a variety of issues and topics for Planning Commission and City Council agenda packets.

Colin serves as Assistant City Attorney for the City of Rancho Mirage and Assistant General Counsel of its affiliated agencies. Colin also serves as Interim Deputy City Attorney for the City of Moreno Valley and Assistant General Counsel for the Southern Coachella Valley Community Services District. In his capacity as general legal counsel, Colin has become well versed with providing sound and practicable advice regarding the application of the open meeting requirements of the Ralph M. Brown Act, the conflict of interest rules of the Political Reform Act and the FPPC Regulations, and the public’s inspection rights under the Public Records Act. In addition to the above, Colin provides general legal advice to the Boards of Directors of the Firm’s two major non-profit clients – Rancho Mirage Writers Festival and Palm Springs Modernism Week.

During law school, Colin worked on an international tax treatise published by his law school and LexisNexis. He also served on the Federal Habeas Corpus Team for the California Department of Justice. While at the Department of Justice, Colin wrote numerous briefs on a wide variety of constitutional issues under review by the Federal District Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Immediately after law school, Colin worked as a legal intern for KK Properties, a private real estate development firm, where he assisted with matters pertaining to land use planning and development.

Colin received his J.D. in 2013 from Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, California, and a B.A. in English in from the University of California at Riverside in 2008.