Retainer

A contract between attorney and client specifying the nature of the services to be rendered and the cost of the services.

Retainer also denotes the fee that the client pays when employing an attorney to act on her behalf. When a client retains an attorney to act for her, the client thereby prevents the attorney from acting for an adversary.

A right to retainer refers to the authority by which the executor or administrator of the estate of a deceased person reserves out of the assets an amount sufficient to pay any debt due to him from the deceased in priority to the other creditors whose debts are of equal degree.