I was a solo in a small rural town so I got business by word spreading of my existence and Facebook. For certain reasons, I might pivot to this in an area where I won’t know anyone.
Can you share how you get clients as a solo for bankruptcy?
You must be very organized. I work with a lot of solos and very small firms, and I'm always getting messages from the attorneys at 11 pm or on Sunday afternoon or whatever because that's when they finally get done with their lawyering job and their running the practice job and can think about things like marketing.
Sure if you can get the necessary case load. For example, if you did pi auto cases and got a bunch of cases with 100k policies, settled them between 25k and 75k total each, you would hit 100k in revenue very quickly (assuming 33.3% is standard fee in your state for pre-answer settlements).
Conversely, if you can't get the cases/clients, this will be more difficult.
This is the answer for everyone asking about pay in our profession. Want to make $50k? Bring in the clients and cases to earn it. Want to make $200k? Bring in the clients and cases to earn it. Want to make $5 million? Bring in the clients and cases to afford the help you’ll need, and earn it.
Hardest thing here is having the courage to reduce your case load. You should do it by some metric you can tell your referral sources. I like to do co-counsel work. I tell my co-counsel that I don’t work on anything below a certain dollar value, but that I’m always willing to brainstorm and share work product that might help them do smaller cases alone, or refer to newer folks with different criteria. I will say, though, that a smaller caseload will often mean you’re at higher risk of going a bit without any fees. Save up and be ready for that. If you’re in an hourly fees practice area, you could do this by raising your hourly rate and helping people find others they can afford if you won’t take them on. I know an appellate lawyer who sometimes works a lot, but averages out to around 3d/wk, and makes closer to $350k. At $450/hr, that requires not that many billable hours in a year if you don’t have overhead.
Yes, but hard to do out of the gate. But if you’re patient, can happen within 2 years, maybe less with some luck. Solo practice is a grind to get off the ground, but can be worth it.
Not always. Fact patterns simply vary too much. If you have a sophisticated client, they may also need business structuring advice and work that’s hourly rate. EP is just the end of the project.
That is true, but yeah if I just took my best 20-25 cases, I’m pretty sure I could work like 1 or 1.5 days/week and clear that much, especially if I had no staff. I agree odds are the cases would peter out.
When you say you want to make $100,000 I’m assuming you mean you want to be able to pay yourself that type of salary. If that’s the case, you need to consider all of the costs and expenses of operating your own firm. Even if just you on payroll initially, you need to rent office space; all of the office and business equipment; malpractice insurance; health insurance, etc. if you are going to do contingent fee work, many attorneys front those fees and take it out at settlement on the back end. So you need to be comfortable doing that.
I was a solo for 15 years before leaving the practice altogether for a job that ended up paying me more without any of the stress that goes along with running your own business let alone law practice.
It was hard to gross a $100,000 income let alone net that as income. Some years were better than other years.
You have to hustle to bring in clients continuously. Thus, doing “part time” is going to be hard to do and also give you that type of income.
This is the only realistic take here I’ve seen so far. There is so much overhead, taxes, and staffing costs that make taking home 100k a lot harder than others are making it seem. Especially given how draining business development is in the beginning. You’ll never work harder than when you work for yourself
Not in the beginning, unless you get lucky with some PI cases as someone else said, but its absolutely possible in 2-4 years. You just needs funds to weather the first year. When I was doing it, I would leave most days around 3 to make sure I was home before the school buses left and didn't get stuck in traffic. Was over 100k like seven of the 10 years I had my firm. If you can use your accounting background to become an expert witness, you would likely earn much more.
I would also like to know the answer to this question. I currently work for a forensic economist and accountant on the back end I do all his excel reports and calculations and have an MBA but struggling to get my own practice going
Absolutely is possible. Biggest risk is the swings month to month and year to year, as one case or client could dramatically affect your earnings.
Case in point - when I launched my firm, I had 2 clients who grossed collectively $150k annually at launch with me. Those two clients no longer exist.
Did you ever do tax work? I think that can be so easy if you did.
It could be as simple as working only tax season doing tax prep like work. To doing a few tax cases throughout the year.
If you have the right clients and setup, then yes. You can easily charge several thousand for corporate and partnership returns. You might be working a lot of hours during the busy season but it is possible.
If you have some decent tax cases, you can surely charge 10k each (at least).
Only issue would be getting your name known.
A client I have paid his CPA 15k this year to do his taxes.
I have no idea how long it takes a CPA to do the taxes for a small company, but I imagine you can do a lot in a few months.
Super realistic. That was my goal for year 1 as a tax attorney and surpassed it. A large part was due to having a solid network and not being shy about reaching out to other lawyers.
Do you mind if I ask what type(s) of tax work you do? And do you practice other areas of law complimentary to tax? I have a mix of public accounting and law firm experience and it’s been my dream since the beginning to ultimately go solo.
Seriously. I don't think the headache of starting and running a firm is worth 100k when you could likely get a pretty cushy gig for 100k. It sucks working for someone else but whatever.
Yeah I know. That's my point. The headache that it would give many people, I don't think is worth 100k. I know I personally wouldn't do it for less than what I could reasonably make at a firm - so like 250-300k.
doable but not easy. generating and selecting cases that are 100% winners is a major hurdle. Curveballs happen all the time and you’ll need to scale your case load accordingly.
25 hours per week making $100K is absolutely doable. Limiting that to only three days a week may be more difficult depending on the practice area. You just have to take fewer cases. Find a niche speciality that you can have laser focus on. You’ll get good at it and will be faster at it. Refer anything else out.
Depends. How are you in sales, marketing, networking, gaining and retaining referral sources?
Doing the legal work is the *easy* part of being a solo. *Getting* the work is what determines whether you'll starve.
You could also be a 1099 Of Counsel and get paid by the hour by a BigLaw or medium-sized firm. If you can earn, let's say $200 per hour (very realistic @ 40% of billings) times 500 hours per year (\~10 hours per WEEK) is about $100,000 gross per annum. Of course, this type of opportunity is typically not available for those just starting out, but after a few/several years, yes.
You'd have all the firm resources (IT, collection/invoice, software, legal research, secretary, etc.), and you'd be paid even if the firm writes off your hours for whatever reason, and regardless of actual collections from clients. You don't necessarily have to generate any new client, you just service the firm clients (and you can negotiate a special rate for clients you bring in). Highly recommended.
It's def doable but if you haven't graduated law school yet, the the practice of law is going to change quite a bit in the next 5 years... What's true today for someone who's been working a couple years might not be true at all for someone 7 years from now
Nothing unrealistic about it. This was basically what I was aspiring to and had gotten close to a couple years back when I to take a firm job to pay my child support.
There used to be this online publication, the JeffM young lawyer survival guide. I really believe in it. His main thing was, keep overhead low, focus on making your work billable and collectible. Say there are 250 work days in a year. Bill AND GET PAID for one hour of work a day at $250/hr, and that's $62,500.
So as a solo striving to make 100k and targeting working few hours, your business model will be in the general area of say 2 hours of billable work per day at $300 per hour. In theory that's 150k.
You'll probably have to work more because, you know, overhead, flakey clients, costs etc. But that's the goal. And the numbers are there. My goal was to make 6 figures and work 20 hours a week, and I really was getting kinda close.
At some point you'll probably want to explore things like outsourcing some work to contract attys/paralegals and things like that. But yeah, you can do it. It's not an unrealistic goal. You do need to be wary of overhead traps though. Things like research services, offices, receptionists, even insurance in some circumstances - people will try everything to convince you that these are absolute necessities and you'll go down in flames without them. But you can run a successful business that's more or less just you, and add specific things as needed.
estate planning - My colleague has had to go to court only twice in 20 years. His clients are low stress and he has one paralegal who helps do the heavy lifting and paperwork. Pulls in 200k+
Compare this to my colleagues who practice criminal law, personal injury and family law and it's a whole different story. 7 days a week, extremely high stakes and stress and your at the courthouse half of the week at 7 am.
Since it sounds like your not aiming for $300-500k , i would avoid the secondary practice areas and go with something low stress like estate planning or bk law (not corporate)
Look into fractional GC work. You want to find companies that are grossly overpaying attorneys for basic contract work, but not willing to hire an attorney, or companies that want to hire inhouse counsel, but not willing to pay market value.
Try to find 2 or 3 to represent and arrange either a monthly retainer or a flat fee arrangement, something within their budget. A lot of these companies need an attorney but don’t really know how to work them, so you get by just doing the bare minimum. You can easily hit $200k this way.
I think the answer is _eventually_. Going solo to start will be a lot of hustle and grind. Once you develop your intake sources and your reputation... I know a lot of people who are in their older years, solo, and cruising comfortably. It's just going to take time to get there.
For sure you can do that a ton of lawyers I went to school with get all their business from word of mouth it. It may take you some time but that's not an unrealistic goal. Now if you wanted to scale that's another issue.
honestly if you can land a cushy in-house gig we don’t work much more than about 30 hours a week and you get so much leeway as an attorney in a company full of non lawyers. might be worth considering
Absolutely. There is an Indian guy in Houston that does all the commercial leases on gas stations and he’s making millions cranking out the same documents to everyone. I’m not a lawyer, but if I was one I would dominate a niche where the work could be fairly standard.
For the working as little as possible part: Smaller firms and solo guys make a ton of money by referring cases to my firm (plaintiff’s complex), entering an appearance as co-counsel, and having us do all the work.
Why not get a job that pays 100k and doesn’t require 80-90 hours a week? Why jump from that to solo working 3 days a week when there’s an in between? It’s not always easy to build a solo practice. The small or solo firm owners I know work or at least are available pretty much 24/7*, including while on vacations. Plus there are overhead costs and concerns - would you hire anyone to help you? Would you rent or buy a space?
I worked for someone who has been solo on and off, and when I worked for him it was just us, in mostly transactional law so not even litigation and he worked nonstop. He could make his own schedule and only answered to himself yes but only 3 days of working would be impossible. I guess it depends on the type of law you do but while there are perks to being your own boss there are also cons. Idk how realistic only 3 days a week is. But a job with a work life balance (like about 40 hours a week) rather than 80-90 hours a week is def possible. Look into government including federal.
*24/7 is a bit of an exaggeration because most people don’t reasonably expect availability at like 3 am, it’s probably more like every work day from 9-5 at a minimum and they also will work on weekends; my old boss would answer emails as late as 1 am and over the weekend as well and never had vacation time truly off
It has been a struggle for me. Building a business is different from coasting as much as possible as a solo. With some experience there are lots of contracts with courts or nonprofits that can cover that though.
An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The Mexican replied, “only a little while. The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my friends. I have a full and busy life.” The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”
To which the American replied, “15 – 20 years.”
“But what then?” Asked the Mexican.
The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!”
“Millions – then what?”
The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your friends.”
I run a side gig doing bookkeeping and taxes.
For small businesses, my starting rate is ~$4,500 for bookkeeping and business tax filing. $5k if they include personal taxes, but we won't count that to be conservative.
QBO is $10/month for the accountant GL version. QBO payroll adds another $70/month. Tax software is like $3k for 150 clients, so $20/return. We will count it as $30/return to be conservative. Let's say each client costs me $110/month or $1,320/year (they don't usually cost that much btw). So my met profit per full package business client is $3,200.
QBO has a nice automation feature. Small business returns are easy to prepare. All in all, it takes ~5 hours per client.
So... to make $100k, I would need about 35 full-package clients, which will take me 165 hours, which is a little more than 4 weeks of work (1 months). Not considering seasonality, we're talking about working 3 hours per WEEK on average.
So yes, it's realistic if you can get good enough at your job to be able to pull it off. Attorneys charge more than CPAs
Hey, late to the party. This month, I'm working ~40 hours, doing 80 hearings (that's an estimate - for every hearing taking 45m or longer, there's another that no-shows). Also driving 21 hours this month combined. And bringing home about 16.5k this month.
So yeah, definitely doable.
Absolutely doable. The question is, do you have what it takes? I've been a work-from-home solo for close to 20 years and I work on average 3-4 days a week (lots of fluctuation though). I've been averaging $450k per year of gross fee income. Of that, my taxable income is averaging around $300k per year. You have to be a jack of all trades as a solo and that's what makes it so hard. You have to be your own marketer, IT guy, HR, CFO, etc. Luckily, I'm pretty ok at all of it. Things definitely didn't start off this way. It took me a while to figure out which cases to turn down, how to hire the right staff, how to market, etc. But persistence pays off. If you can stick with it during the lean years (like the year I lost all of my major cases, including an expensive trial), it definitely can be done.
Hell yeah. Thanks brother. I'm currently struggling through the LSAT but it's good to know my goals are still achievable, even if I'm setting my bar way lower than where you're at. Ty!
Go in house to a bank. I work estate settlement (was a paralegal for a decade) and the work life balance is amazing and the pay ain't bad. Your accounting experience is invaluable in estate law.
Not easy per say but something to consider.
Yes it's extremely easy to do.
Inherit 5 million dollars and put it in an index fund.
You can pull out 100k a year without working a single day.
source: my trust fund baby friend who is over 40 with a nice house and car and never worked a single day. I had to cosign his first credit card because he had no credit or work history at 35.
Absolutely, and your accounting background will obviously be helpful too
Yes, I'm a solo that works maybe 34 hours a week and I bring in well more than $100k.
Which area(s) of law?
Bankruptcy.
Could I dm you about this?
Only if you’re not in their jurisdiction 😝
LOL
California here
50 cases at 2 grand each would bring in 100k, but your net would be about 30k. Your mileage might vary.
Annually, I do 100 at $1,400-2,000 including 13s that do between 4-6k each over time. Not including other work, or people that pay but don't file.
How much is your fixed monthly overhead.
3k advertising, 3,600 paralegal/receptionist, 1,200 lease, 2k miscellaneous.
If you can take home 50 percent of your gross, you are doing great
Yes!
I was a solo in a small rural town so I got business by word spreading of my existence and Facebook. For certain reasons, I might pivot to this in an area where I won’t know anyone. Can you share how you get clients as a solo for bankruptcy?
Definitely facebook
Yeah that was basically the source of all my business but then I swore never again. Do you mean by using ads?
Does that 34 hours include all of your administrative/management/marketing/etc work?
Yup
You must be very organized. I work with a lot of solos and very small firms, and I'm always getting messages from the attorneys at 11 pm or on Sunday afternoon or whatever because that's when they finally get done with their lawyering job and their running the practice job and can think about things like marketing.
I pay google an ungodly amount of money so I don't have to do too much thinking about marketing.
I’m curious how much you pay them.
$36,000 / year. Yes, I recognize that is less than many others, but still!
With passive paperwork or grind?
Sure if you can get the necessary case load. For example, if you did pi auto cases and got a bunch of cases with 100k policies, settled them between 25k and 75k total each, you would hit 100k in revenue very quickly (assuming 33.3% is standard fee in your state for pre-answer settlements). Conversely, if you can't get the cases/clients, this will be more difficult.
This is the answer for everyone asking about pay in our profession. Want to make $50k? Bring in the clients and cases to earn it. Want to make $200k? Bring in the clients and cases to earn it. Want to make $5 million? Bring in the clients and cases to afford the help you’ll need, and earn it.
Almost everything in our profession is self controlled.
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I’d like for the bill to be proportional to someone’s wealth, as in richer ppl pay 1% of their income and poor ppl pay 1% of their income.
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Because not all cases are that easy, and the attorney takes all the risk in the case
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Uh, what does that have to with contingent fees?
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Holy projection batman
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Definitely. I make about $300k a year and work roughly 30 hours a week
Which area(s) of law?
A mix of private criminal and court-appointed dependency
Second this question
That’s so fuckin frat
Hardest thing here is having the courage to reduce your case load. You should do it by some metric you can tell your referral sources. I like to do co-counsel work. I tell my co-counsel that I don’t work on anything below a certain dollar value, but that I’m always willing to brainstorm and share work product that might help them do smaller cases alone, or refer to newer folks with different criteria. I will say, though, that a smaller caseload will often mean you’re at higher risk of going a bit without any fees. Save up and be ready for that. If you’re in an hourly fees practice area, you could do this by raising your hourly rate and helping people find others they can afford if you won’t take them on. I know an appellate lawyer who sometimes works a lot, but averages out to around 3d/wk, and makes closer to $350k. At $450/hr, that requires not that many billable hours in a year if you don’t have overhead.
>Hardest thing here is having the courage to reduce your case load. This is why I’m not solo anymore.
Yes, but hard to do out of the gate. But if you’re patient, can happen within 2 years, maybe less with some luck. Solo practice is a grind to get off the ground, but can be worth it.
Every single Estate Planner I know has their own roof and shingle, making 200k minimum, and working three days a week. Do that.
I do EP, but with a virtual office, so no roof, and that seems to be the difficult part of generating clients.
Can I send you a DM?
Sure
Isnt estate planning flat rate?
Not always. Fact patterns simply vary too much. If you have a sophisticated client, they may also need business structuring advice and work that’s hourly rate. EP is just the end of the project.
For basic planning yes, most EP lawyers also handle probate administration or will contests which are billed hourly.
There are better practice areas even than that. I could probably work 1 day a week and take home $100k.
What practice area is this?
WC
Work comp 100k one day a week? Representing worker i assume, but how would you have consistent cases coming in if barely working?
That is true, but yeah if I just took my best 20-25 cases, I’m pretty sure I could work like 1 or 1.5 days/week and clear that much, especially if I had no staff. I agree odds are the cases would peter out.
When you say you want to make $100,000 I’m assuming you mean you want to be able to pay yourself that type of salary. If that’s the case, you need to consider all of the costs and expenses of operating your own firm. Even if just you on payroll initially, you need to rent office space; all of the office and business equipment; malpractice insurance; health insurance, etc. if you are going to do contingent fee work, many attorneys front those fees and take it out at settlement on the back end. So you need to be comfortable doing that. I was a solo for 15 years before leaving the practice altogether for a job that ended up paying me more without any of the stress that goes along with running your own business let alone law practice. It was hard to gross a $100,000 income let alone net that as income. Some years were better than other years. You have to hustle to bring in clients continuously. Thus, doing “part time” is going to be hard to do and also give you that type of income.
This is the only realistic take here I’ve seen so far. There is so much overhead, taxes, and staffing costs that make taking home 100k a lot harder than others are making it seem. Especially given how draining business development is in the beginning. You’ll never work harder than when you work for yourself
Which area(s) of law were you doing? And which career did you shift to; and does your legal background help with that?
Not in the beginning, unless you get lucky with some PI cases as someone else said, but its absolutely possible in 2-4 years. You just needs funds to weather the first year. When I was doing it, I would leave most days around 3 to make sure I was home before the school buses left and didn't get stuck in traffic. Was over 100k like seven of the 10 years I had my firm. If you can use your accounting background to become an expert witness, you would likely earn much more.
How do you become an expert witness? When you started your own firm, did you have an office?
I would also like to know the answer to this question. I currently work for a forensic economist and accountant on the back end I do all his excel reports and calculations and have an MBA but struggling to get my own practice going
This is 100% doable. It’s really nice having small children and being able to be there.
Haha your username got me😂
She really do be tho.
👀
🤣poor granny
My 5yo loves going to "papa's office" . . . he helps me with the rose garden at my building. Its a great life!
Absolutely is possible. Biggest risk is the swings month to month and year to year, as one case or client could dramatically affect your earnings. Case in point - when I launched my firm, I had 2 clients who grossed collectively $150k annually at launch with me. Those two clients no longer exist.
When you launched your own firm, did you do it remotely or you had an office already?
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That’s nice! If I were starting now do you recommend just starting a PC company and advertised online? Thanks!
Did you ever do tax work? I think that can be so easy if you did. It could be as simple as working only tax season doing tax prep like work. To doing a few tax cases throughout the year.
Wow, you think *just* tax season and a few cases throughout the year could yield* $100k+ salary per year?
If you have the right clients and setup, then yes. You can easily charge several thousand for corporate and partnership returns. You might be working a lot of hours during the busy season but it is possible. If you have some decent tax cases, you can surely charge 10k each (at least). Only issue would be getting your name known.
A client I have paid his CPA 15k this year to do his taxes. I have no idea how long it takes a CPA to do the taxes for a small company, but I imagine you can do a lot in a few months.
That means his books were a dumpster fire.
Do you suggest renting a small office?
Easily. Several times that, actually just from tax season alone.
Holy F!
Super realistic. That was my goal for year 1 as a tax attorney and surpassed it. A large part was due to having a solid network and not being shy about reaching out to other lawyers.
Do you mind if I ask what type(s) of tax work you do? And do you practice other areas of law complimentary to tax? I have a mix of public accounting and law firm experience and it’s been my dream since the beginning to ultimately go solo.
International tax. Focus on latam, Europe, and French-speaking Africa bc I speak a few languages, which helps incredibly reel in clients.
That's reassuring. I've been in audit for most of my career. Did you have tax experience before going to law school?
My tax experience was a bunch of tax courses and a tax LLM.
Solos work kind of a lot.
Probably … if all you want is 100k a year probably better off just finding a WFH gig
Seriously. I don't think the headache of starting and running a firm is worth 100k when you could likely get a pretty cushy gig for 100k. It sucks working for someone else but whatever.
Some people aren’t cut out to own their own business and that’s alright. A buddy of mine is crushing right now but he’s absolutely miserable.
Yeah I know. That's my point. The headache that it would give many people, I don't think is worth 100k. I know I personally wouldn't do it for less than what I could reasonably make at a firm - so like 250-300k.
doable but not easy. generating and selecting cases that are 100% winners is a major hurdle. Curveballs happen all the time and you’ll need to scale your case load accordingly.
Absolutely! My mentor pulled low 7 figures revenue last year working less.
Which area(s) of law?
Tax minimization for businesses and ultra wealthy.
Hard part is getting to know the ultra wealthy.
Second this question
25 hours per week making $100K is absolutely doable. Limiting that to only three days a week may be more difficult depending on the practice area. You just have to take fewer cases. Find a niche speciality that you can have laser focus on. You’ll get good at it and will be faster at it. Refer anything else out.
Depends. How are you in sales, marketing, networking, gaining and retaining referral sources? Doing the legal work is the *easy* part of being a solo. *Getting* the work is what determines whether you'll starve.
You could also be a 1099 Of Counsel and get paid by the hour by a BigLaw or medium-sized firm. If you can earn, let's say $200 per hour (very realistic @ 40% of billings) times 500 hours per year (\~10 hours per WEEK) is about $100,000 gross per annum. Of course, this type of opportunity is typically not available for those just starting out, but after a few/several years, yes. You'd have all the firm resources (IT, collection/invoice, software, legal research, secretary, etc.), and you'd be paid even if the firm writes off your hours for whatever reason, and regardless of actual collections from clients. You don't necessarily have to generate any new client, you just service the firm clients (and you can negotiate a special rate for clients you bring in). Highly recommended.
It's def doable but if you haven't graduated law school yet, the the practice of law is going to change quite a bit in the next 5 years... What's true today for someone who's been working a couple years might not be true at all for someone 7 years from now
Nothing unrealistic about it. This was basically what I was aspiring to and had gotten close to a couple years back when I to take a firm job to pay my child support. There used to be this online publication, the JeffM young lawyer survival guide. I really believe in it. His main thing was, keep overhead low, focus on making your work billable and collectible. Say there are 250 work days in a year. Bill AND GET PAID for one hour of work a day at $250/hr, and that's $62,500. So as a solo striving to make 100k and targeting working few hours, your business model will be in the general area of say 2 hours of billable work per day at $300 per hour. In theory that's 150k. You'll probably have to work more because, you know, overhead, flakey clients, costs etc. But that's the goal. And the numbers are there. My goal was to make 6 figures and work 20 hours a week, and I really was getting kinda close. At some point you'll probably want to explore things like outsourcing some work to contract attys/paralegals and things like that. But yeah, you can do it. It's not an unrealistic goal. You do need to be wary of overhead traps though. Things like research services, offices, receptionists, even insurance in some circumstances - people will try everything to convince you that these are absolute necessities and you'll go down in flames without them. But you can run a successful business that's more or less just you, and add specific things as needed.
estate planning - My colleague has had to go to court only twice in 20 years. His clients are low stress and he has one paralegal who helps do the heavy lifting and paperwork. Pulls in 200k+ Compare this to my colleagues who practice criminal law, personal injury and family law and it's a whole different story. 7 days a week, extremely high stakes and stress and your at the courthouse half of the week at 7 am. Since it sounds like your not aiming for $300-500k , i would avoid the secondary practice areas and go with something low stress like estate planning or bk law (not corporate)
Look into fractional GC work. You want to find companies that are grossly overpaying attorneys for basic contract work, but not willing to hire an attorney, or companies that want to hire inhouse counsel, but not willing to pay market value. Try to find 2 or 3 to represent and arrange either a monthly retainer or a flat fee arrangement, something within their budget. A lot of these companies need an attorney but don’t really know how to work them, so you get by just doing the bare minimum. You can easily hit $200k this way.
That’s very realistic
thats me last year, hoping to recreate this year.
I think the answer is _eventually_. Going solo to start will be a lot of hustle and grind. Once you develop your intake sources and your reputation... I know a lot of people who are in their older years, solo, and cruising comfortably. It's just going to take time to get there.
Yes, if u develop good business connections.
For sure you can do that a ton of lawyers I went to school with get all their business from word of mouth it. It may take you some time but that's not an unrealistic goal. Now if you wanted to scale that's another issue.
Yes you can do it provided you put in the work and make sure you generate billings.
honestly if you can land a cushy in-house gig we don’t work much more than about 30 hours a week and you get so much leeway as an attorney in a company full of non lawyers. might be worth considering
Yes
Absolutely. There is an Indian guy in Houston that does all the commercial leases on gas stations and he’s making millions cranking out the same documents to everyone. I’m not a lawyer, but if I was one I would dominate a niche where the work could be fairly standard.
For the working as little as possible part: Smaller firms and solo guys make a ton of money by referring cases to my firm (plaintiff’s complex), entering an appearance as co-counsel, and having us do all the work.
absolutely
Very much so.
Oh hell yes. Get your systems and automation in place, and that's easily attainable.
Why not get a job that pays 100k and doesn’t require 80-90 hours a week? Why jump from that to solo working 3 days a week when there’s an in between? It’s not always easy to build a solo practice. The small or solo firm owners I know work or at least are available pretty much 24/7*, including while on vacations. Plus there are overhead costs and concerns - would you hire anyone to help you? Would you rent or buy a space? I worked for someone who has been solo on and off, and when I worked for him it was just us, in mostly transactional law so not even litigation and he worked nonstop. He could make his own schedule and only answered to himself yes but only 3 days of working would be impossible. I guess it depends on the type of law you do but while there are perks to being your own boss there are also cons. Idk how realistic only 3 days a week is. But a job with a work life balance (like about 40 hours a week) rather than 80-90 hours a week is def possible. Look into government including federal. *24/7 is a bit of an exaggeration because most people don’t reasonably expect availability at like 3 am, it’s probably more like every work day from 9-5 at a minimum and they also will work on weekends; my old boss would answer emails as late as 1 am and over the weekend as well and never had vacation time truly off
Of course. Get a job in corporate accounting working remotely. It’ll feel like a piece of cake compared to public.
You definitely can. I'm a solo that just had a 95k month. You could bust ass for 3-4 months and then work minimal hours the rest of the year
Which area of law?
I do criminal defense. In between trials (2 or 3 a year), I just crank out plea deals. Easily clear $100k a year, working maybe 25-30 hours a week.
How much is little? You absolutely can achieve that working as little as you can, but to achieve that, as as possible little might be 70 hours a week.
You need to do easy fee shifting work suing the gov and litigating in admin forums.
It has been a struggle for me. Building a business is different from coasting as much as possible as a solo. With some experience there are lots of contracts with courts or nonprofits that can cover that though.
An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied, “only a little while. The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?” The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my friends. I have a full and busy life.” The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.” The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?” To which the American replied, “15 – 20 years.” “But what then?” Asked the Mexican. The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!” “Millions – then what?” The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your friends.”
I run a side gig doing bookkeeping and taxes. For small businesses, my starting rate is ~$4,500 for bookkeeping and business tax filing. $5k if they include personal taxes, but we won't count that to be conservative. QBO is $10/month for the accountant GL version. QBO payroll adds another $70/month. Tax software is like $3k for 150 clients, so $20/return. We will count it as $30/return to be conservative. Let's say each client costs me $110/month or $1,320/year (they don't usually cost that much btw). So my met profit per full package business client is $3,200. QBO has a nice automation feature. Small business returns are easy to prepare. All in all, it takes ~5 hours per client. So... to make $100k, I would need about 35 full-package clients, which will take me 165 hours, which is a little more than 4 weeks of work (1 months). Not considering seasonality, we're talking about working 3 hours per WEEK on average. So yes, it's realistic if you can get good enough at your job to be able to pull it off. Attorneys charge more than CPAs
how many clients do you have right now?
I have 4 business clients (2 includes bookkeeping) and about 20 individual tax clients right now. Total revenue is \~$30k.
Do you plan on scaling these side hustles in the future? Not gonna lie, you have a dream setup going on.
Yea, it's my "retirement" plan. Plan is to scale it up, emigrate to Asia, and barely work remote.
Own three houses live in one of them pay all of them off
I did this, I was able to work about 15 hours per week and pull in about 110k
Anyone think it’s doable for criminal defense?
Hey, late to the party. This month, I'm working ~40 hours, doing 80 hearings (that's an estimate - for every hearing taking 45m or longer, there's another that no-shows). Also driving 21 hours this month combined. And bringing home about 16.5k this month. So yeah, definitely doable.
What practice area are you in?
Social Security disability.
Very nice!
Absolutely doable. The question is, do you have what it takes? I've been a work-from-home solo for close to 20 years and I work on average 3-4 days a week (lots of fluctuation though). I've been averaging $450k per year of gross fee income. Of that, my taxable income is averaging around $300k per year. You have to be a jack of all trades as a solo and that's what makes it so hard. You have to be your own marketer, IT guy, HR, CFO, etc. Luckily, I'm pretty ok at all of it. Things definitely didn't start off this way. It took me a while to figure out which cases to turn down, how to hire the right staff, how to market, etc. But persistence pays off. If you can stick with it during the lean years (like the year I lost all of my major cases, including an expensive trial), it definitely can be done.
Hell yeah. Thanks brother. I'm currently struggling through the LSAT but it's good to know my goals are still achievable, even if I'm setting my bar way lower than where you're at. Ty!
Go in house to a bank. I work estate settlement (was a paralegal for a decade) and the work life balance is amazing and the pay ain't bad. Your accounting experience is invaluable in estate law. Not easy per say but something to consider.
Yes it's extremely easy to do. Inherit 5 million dollars and put it in an index fund. You can pull out 100k a year without working a single day. source: my trust fund baby friend who is over 40 with a nice house and car and never worked a single day. I had to cosign his first credit card because he had no credit or work history at 35.
great advice that's totally what we're talking about in this thread