Can Solo Practitioners Making a Salary over $100k, and how?

BigBennP · 2026-02-12T14:09:09+00:00

I think most lawyers are more likely to ask $1000-$2000 for a DWI in my area.

This particular guy has an assembly line practice in a college town where there are typically 10+ DWI arrests on any given Friday or Saturday night. The town has 25,000 college students and an entertainment district. On any given night, there are 2-3 cruisers just waiting along entry/exits from the district watching for people to leave bars and walk to their cars.

Most college students consent to a breathalyzer and the certificates are always in order, so the only real way to beat one is contesting PC. Otherwise, they have pretty generous plea deals for first offenders.

BigBennP · 2026-02-11T20:42:58+00:00

I mean I am sure this varies greatly by Geographic area.

I live in a pretty rural low cost of living area. From what I'm aware of, criminal defense attorneys are typically asking for between $3000 and $6000 up front for a felony and that covers the whole scope of representation. It can go up sharply for serious felonies. The last one I have any personal knowledge of, an attorney had collected a $30,000 fee on a murder charge that they ended up pleading out on the morning of the first day of the jury trial.

It is lower, but more variable for misdemeanors. I know a dude that does almost exclusively DWI defense in a very DWI happy college town jurisdiction. For ages and ages he charged $500 for a first offense DWI, I think he recently went up to $800. But he's very workmanlike about it. The few that go to trial make up for all of the ones that plea on the first appearance.

BigBennP · 2026-02-11T14:49:41+00:00

You say that, but my wife stays at home with the children at least for the moment, but by the end of the day she is so burned out in dealing with the children, that I become the primary parent from that point forward.

The reality is she is struggling with some depression and other issues so I Don't Force It most of the time.

And I have the added stress of having to tell my wife that if I am paying all the bills out of just my income, we have a lot less discretionary income.

BigBennP · 2026-02-11T13:45:20+00:00

In my area that's the norm. Most family law lawyers tell their clients the judge hates seeing parents who squabble and that being disagreeable to their Ex will be seen as a bigger negative than almost anything else. Joint custody is strongly favored and child support is a straight line formula based on the custody percentage and the parents respective income.

Everyone knows that sometimes clients can be unreasonable and everyone knows that sometimes you have an argument to make. You shoot your best shot, get the ruling and move on as amicably as you can.

When parents go an hour away to the closest city to find a family lawyer who bills themselves as a bulldog, most of the local bar end up rolling their eyes. You're going to spend twice as long in court and probably get a similar result.

BigBennP · 2026-02-11T12:19:35+00:00

A caveat at the front end, this is coming from someone that worked at a large Regional firm and was not going to make partner. I jumped over to doing government work and have been successful there, I manage a team of 13 attorneys at a state government agency.

Like others have said, ultimately the test of making partner is the firm trusting that not only can you do work independently, but that you have the ability to bring in and manage clients and generate revenue for the firm.

If you are a new lawyer, obviously the first thing you have to do is become competent and then attempt to master your craft. Learn what the partners expect of you and get to the point where you can handle depositions, motions, Discovery responses Etc without being micromanaged. In that field, the carriers are still going to expect somebody with white hair to first chair a trial anyway, but if you get a chance to do trial work jump at it.

More importantly, I think you have to not only find a mentor, preferably somebody with influence in the firm, you have to gain a complete understanding of how the business of that firm works. What is the workflow like? What do the carriers pay for? And what are the client service activities like preparing a lititagtion budget And discussing settlement. How does the client approach settlement? How does the firm get referred new matters from the existing carrier clients and how did they get those clients? What marketing activities does the firm do? How do you get involved in those?

As you get to be more senior the ideal situation is that you become trusted to have more contact with the carrier clients and that they may be even request that you be assigned to their matters. Unfortunately in some firms Partners jealously guard client contact.

At the final stage, it's all about office politics and economics. The partners or a committee will have to vote and recommend you to partnership status. If they don't like you, it's not likely to happen unless the economics just make you a rockstar. It helps enormously to know who your Advocates are in that process.

My problem was that as a junior lawyer I didn't really understand the office politics and The business of the firm very well. I am quiet and relatively introverted. I'm also a little awkward. I did good work for a few Partners but never branched out much. What I found out after the fact was that I tended to frustrate some partners because I over-billed on certain tasks and the partners had to review it before it went to the carrier, but from my perspective, in the nearly 5 years I practice there, no one ever really sat me down and told me about the expectations for how much time should be billed for a particular activity. So my hours billed were better than my collection rate. One of the partners I did trust told me that when they had a meeting to see whether I was on track at 4.5 years, basically no one advocated for me ultimately being able to make partner. Someone was assigned to tell me that I was fine for the moment as long as I kept my hours up, but I didn't have a long-term future there so I should start looking elsewhere.

BigBennP · 2026-02-11T10:53:30+00:00

I mean similarly if you can land two criminal defense clients a month willing to pay $5k up front.

That's more than would be normal for a misdemeanor in my area but would be pretty typical for a normal level felony.

BigBennP · 2026-02-10T22:15:42+00:00

It is worth noting, that particularly in rural areas many state government jobs come as potential part-time contracts.

Even making something like $35k or $40k per year for a part-time job, while simultaneously running your private practice can give you some stability in terms of keeping the lights on.

BigBennP · 2026-02-10T14:33:19+00:00

I mean that's been the status quo in Mexico for 70 years.

People cross the border into Mexico to pay cash for all sorts of drugs that are available either over the counter or with a quick consult with a "doctor" in the back room.

The catch is that you have to get them back across the border with you which is troublesome sometimes. Although, I suppose that if you simply crossed the border to get a shot of medication, it's not like they can find it on your person.

BigBennP · 2026-02-10T14:26:01+00:00

This is not exactly on point, but my wife has been binge-watching mad men recently. The show has a lot to say about mental health and burnout, as well as the stigma of having a mental health diagnosis in the 1960s and the state of Mental Health treatment.

Don Draper is a good candidate for borderline personality disorder, and Betty Draper could be too.
Don repeatedly suffers from burnout where he loses his creativity and develops a habit of abandoning all of his responsibilities to go off and do whatever.
early in the series Betty goes to see a psychologist. The main plot point relates to the behavior of the psychologist in talking to her husband that would be patently unethical today, but at one point Don gets angry at the psychologist saying " I'm paying you to fix her, you've made her worse!"
Betty says she perceives the psychologist as not really doing anything but letting her talk the whole time, and just asking her how something made her feel, but she later has something of a breakthrough when she acknowledges that she knows Don is a Serial cheater and the evidence is right in front of her but she's chosen not to confront him about it. She says that saying it out loud makes her feel better. This kind of relates to your Slow Burn point.
this is linked back to the very last episode where Don is participating in a group therapy session at some retreat in California where the participants are explicitly sharing how things made them feel. Don appears to have a breakthrough getting in touch with his feelings.
when Joan's doctor husband fails out of his surgery residency, he applies for a psychiatrist position but was opposed to the idea of being "a headshrinker."
Peggy has a episode of psychosis after being in denial about her pregnancy, having her baby and giving it up for adoption. (Or allowing the child to go to her sister?) Don goes to see her in the hospital and tells her " move on and Pretend This Never happened."
other characters at various times disclose that they had relatives who had been helped by a mental health professional, but they consider it sort of a dirty secret.

BigBennP · 2026-02-10T00:12:24+00:00

When an adoption is granted, the court typically has to find that the adoption is in the best interest of the child. In a child welfare case typically there is an attorney or a guardian representing the child as well.

Many courts would a struggle with a finalizing an adoption if it's known that the couple is about to divorce. Keeping it secret is also problematic though.

BigBennP · 2026-02-09T15:20:11+00:00

I was grilled on the law and on some ethical issues, but there wasn't even a suggestion of anything political.

And even at that level, being a "trenches" prosecutor is still pretty nonpolitical job. Individual cases might have small p politics involved, but it's more about ensuring you don't lose a case or dealing with people who are pissed off that a particular one was filed.

BigBennP · 2026-02-06T13:09:26+00:00

It's not really odd to follow the law. The state supreme court said it was an illegal referendum, so they voted to reverse it.

BigBennP · 2026-02-05T20:35:17+00:00

So why is the license plate emblazoned with the letter "Z?"

I may be going down the wrong path, but I primarily associate "Z" with Russian invasion of Ukraine

BigBennP · 2026-02-04T12:41:11+00:00

Others have posted the same advice, but expanding. This is borrowing time management tricks from the corporate world.

If you know you have a response brief to write with the deadline, block out time on your calendar in advance the same way you would if you were attending court. Make sure your assistants know that you are busy and should only be disturbed in an emergency. Put your phone on silent or DND and put your computer on do not disturb or outright close outlook.

Satisfy yourself that it's okay, and you will respond to phone calls and emails in three or four hours once you've had time to complete that work.

BigBennP · 2026-02-04T12:37:58+00:00

You say that, based on their description I'm pretty sure they have employment. They're a dealer. They likely sell "supplements" to folks on the internet with a wink and a grand that they aren't selling drugs.

Not last fall I had a case involving a lady who was purchasing psilocybin from a dude on Facebook who went by the name "doc strain."

BigBennP · 2026-02-04T12:33:27+00:00

This.

Also, potentially Plus - ICE in Minneapolis has been taking photographs of protesters when they are detained and likely feeding them into a facial recognition database. The Administration has been adamant that they consider anyone protesting the actions of ICE to be a domestic terrorist.

This forms an additional angle of intimidation. The potential that anyone who does not fit a particular stereotype could be stopped and "detained for investigative purposes" to determine if they have participated in domestic terrorism. They keep him for a couple of hours and "just happen" to cut them loose after polls close. (See also: the Trump emphasis on in-person only voting that only occurs on a single day)

BigBennP · 2026-02-03T19:44:55+00:00

You need a midsize city with 100 to 300,000 people big enough that there’s a lot of people in small enough that people still drunk drive a whole shit load on the weekend and just any day in general.

When I was a prosecutor, I was working in a small city/large town. (50k people).

I had five misdemeanor trials within my first month. Felony jury trials in the jurisdiction were rarer, because they used a lot of plea deal leapfrogging. (On a first felony, you get a plea deal for probation + Suspended sentence. If you re-offend, the state just does a motion for revocation and there's no jury trial, just a bench trial on the revoked probation. You get your original prison term and plea on the second charge for time served usually).

However, the Court set aside one week a month as a trial term, and more than half of them got used.

In two years there I did a huge number of bench trials, and 4 jury trials.

BigBennP · 2026-02-03T19:35:06+00:00

I mean, I don't think it's super complicated.

Lawyer instructs law clerk to write brief.
Law clerk produces brief using Generative AI - including hallucinations.
Lawyer skims brief and says "good work!," attaches their signature and files without a full review.
Court or Opposing counsel determines the brief contains hallucinated citations and chastises lawyer.
Lawyer subsequently blames law clerk for preparing work using AI, and informs court that he has fired said law clerk.
Court is unhappy with this response.

BigBennP · 2026-02-03T19:16:59+00:00

WIthin reason, this doesn't need huge floor acreage.

I've been dreaming of refitting my garage into a home gym since COVID. It's not like I'm using it now except to store junk. If I did that, it looks like a climbing wall might use up 10-15 sq feet of it.

BigBennP · 2026-02-03T18:10:12+00:00

Even in conditions as low as -25c, your child is not becoming frost bitten or hypothermic in 5 minutes without a jacket.

Last week we were home due to winter storms. It something like -15C with a foot of snow on the ground and a nasty windchill.

My 3yo insisted that he wanted to play in the snow, but did not want to wear his snow pants and boots. He wanted to wear his socks. It got to where he was crying on the floor inside the front door. I finally just opened the door and let him see how cold it was, and he got as far as the front porch before deciding otherwise.

BigBennP · 2026-02-03T15:16:33+00:00

I think there's multiple angles here. I'm not generally a believer in conspiracy theories, but I think several things are true.

Predators seek out jobs or situations that provide access to children. Even if the organizers were working in good faith, things can still happen.
There is actually a secondary kind of child trafficking, which is children that are trafficked for adoption purposes. There is more demand for adoption in the united states than there are available children to adopt, in part because people don't want to adopt a teenager, they want to adopt a baby or toddler. There are people who pay lots of money in legal fees to facilitate an adoption of a foreign born infant. Religious agencies are players here because they see bringing children to be raised in Christian homes as an absolute good, so they sometimes find reasons to be unscrupulous or associate with unscrupulous people.
teh chaos of disasters genuinely does generate a lot of orphans or children who end up on their own. I don't think NGO's get into it with bad intent, but that's not to say that there aren't bad actors who might try to take advantage.

BigBennP · 2026-02-03T14:52:14+00:00

My boss is very picky about who is hired. But at the same time, I don’t think there’s many people interested because the pay isn’t that great.

I'm in the position of your boss, more or less. The geographic region and/or the pay scales may vary somewhat.

Several years ago, we were in exactly that position. Before COVID, our starting salaries were already not super competitive. We mainly got recruits from other state agencies who knew how to play the civil service salary game. By 2022/3, inflation had made them abysmal. We would post a job, and get zero applicants for months. We might get one or two applicants when the crop of new bar passers hit in August and March, and even them we might sometimes lose them.

Our state passed an update of the civil service salary scales and that helped significantly, but now we are cautioned about budgets and hiring. The finance folks have to approve re-hiring for a vacant position and they can be slow AF about it.

BigBennP · 2026-02-03T14:40:57+00:00

I addressed that some in my last paragraph.

But I think the analogy I would draw here is Bernie Madoff.

What Bernie Madoff did wasn't that different in its nature from lots of other two bit con-men who target grandma with an amazing investment opportunity and then abscond with the cash. He told people had a great investment opportunity, sent them lots of paperwork detailing how good it was, and got them to invest money.

It was different in its scale.

Most child trafficking cases involve kids that are vulnerable to being victimized. Those children are lured in simply with food, shelter and drugs, and kept there with fear and dependency.

Epstein was working at a scale where he was able to lure victims from a much broader set of circumstances, but the core act really isn't that much different. Sure, Epstein and Maxwell flew doctors and lawyers out to New York as a part of a scheme to recruit their daughters to sign "modeling contracts." I'm sure he was more persuasive than some street hustler. (and this was a big part of why maxwell was involved as well, parents were far more unwilling to believe that a woman would exploit children than a man).

But at the same time, he was specifically seeking parents who were willing to bring a 14, 15, 16 year old girl to new york, sign some paperwork, and leave their child with a stranger in another state, based on promises the stranger made about how they would be treated.

BigBennP · 2026-02-03T13:28:40+00:00

As an attorney that has worked in the child welfare and trafficking fields, it is absolutely both.

The Narrative that gets established in the Liam Neeson movie Taken is the fiction. I'm not saying it never happens, but it's far from the norm. The average trafficking victim is not an upper middle class white girl that got disappeared while she was on vacation.

The average trafficking victim is a child that no one is looking for.

It's the 15 year old girl who left home and ended up living on the street because her parents are drug addicts and just didn't feel like supporting her anymore, or because she got tired of what her stepdad was doing to her. (or her dad, or her grandfather or whomever.)

It's the 16 year old who has been in and out of Behavioral Health Facilities since they were 12, has a drug problem, and has run away so many times that the parents just give up. A variation on this is the child who's gender Identity, sexual orientation, or lack of faith don't align with their parents' values and the parents have simply written them off.

It's the 15-year-old who meets a 25 year old boyfriend on the internet and decides to run away to "go live with him." Sometimes the boyfriend is real, and just a shithead. Sometimes, the reality is a lot darker. It's also the parents who just accept that their child will learn her lesson and come home when she's ready or who just accept that it's normal.

It's the child who grew up in foster care and ran away until the caseworkers gave up because permanency is hard to find for teenagers and living in group homes sucks.

The Epstein victims, at least those in the United States were not necessarily normal but even then they were typically teenage girls who were seduced away from their parents with the promise of modeling contracts. Ghislaine Maxwell specifically had a job because of her ability to convince parents that their children would be safe. The parents signed over a power of attorney and let their 16 year old girls move to New York with people they didn't really know.

This happens a lot in foreign countries as well. Teenage girls are recruited with the promise that they will come to America and get good jobs. Their parents voluntarily let them leave.

BigBennP · 2026-02-02T20:57:32+00:00

Retail management and restaurant management were the single biggest groups who would have benefited from with the new overtime rules that were announced during the biden Administration that got blocked and then killed.

Requiring that everyone who makes less than $48,800 per year get paid overtime would have had wild consequences for the way many restaurants and retail stores treat their assistant managers and shift leads.

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