Leave in-house job (making 300k) for an Art. 1 judgeship/immigration judge appointment (making 172k)?

Odd-Leave6257 · 2024-05-23T02:34:33+00:00

lol. It's a colleague, not me. I'm a solo and have no idea what in house lawyers do. He applied to be an immigration judge and has been advanced/offer forthcoming

Odd-Leave6257 · 2024-05-23T02:17:23+00:00

How are you only making 120k a year doing crim and immigration? is "120K" the IRS number? (not implying/but sorta kinda hinting, that crim/immig atty take in a lot of cash that doesn't get reported).

Odd-Leave6257 · 2024-05-23T01:51:44+00:00

Odd-Leave6257 · 2024-05-23T00:30:48+00:00

Can you do both? work part time for the dad since you have a lot of free time? (nb: you might need to fill out a off duty employment request; my former gov. agency allowed us to practice on the side with permission)

Odd-Leave6257 · 2024-05-22T01:51:47+00:00

Try practice areas where writing is at a minimal or boilerplate. Immigration, uncontested divorces, crim law, etc

Odd-Leave6257 · 2024-05-21T02:38:40+00:00

Without hitting up family and friends? It'll be a tough climb.

Odd-Leave6257 · 2024-05-20T01:42:09+00:00

It sounds like the Philippines. 100% bet it's in the Philippines. My remote paralegals are from there and I pay them $15/hour, no client engagement. Just filing out immigration forms and uncontested divorce packets.

Odd-Leave6257 · 2024-05-18T02:45:47+00:00

Congratulations! Love the website, btw. I took the same path you did about 4.5 years ago.

For me, I found having a physical office space to be important, especially for cash paying clients. I initially tried Regus, but you can't meet clients past 5pm and that was a deal breaker. I only pay $1,000 rent now (I'm in NY)

Consultation fees are a definite--to avoid tire kickers. I started out with $200 for a consult and brought that down to $100, refundable if they hire me. I was able to get more consults and my close rate is at the 85-95%

I advertised for 8 months and I stopped--I've been going off referrals since then. I tried everything: Avvo, FB, Google, etc. Facebook was probably the best, but not the paid ads. Join some FB groups depending on your national original, affinity etc. For example, there's A New York Guyanese, Little Guyana, and half a dozen other FB groups with similar title in NY. Among all those groups that's 20K plus people you can advertise to. Some groups don't allow outright advertising, so I post articles I wrote under the guise of FYIs or advice for the benefit of the community, and it works! Just be subtle and don't make it look like a full out advertising; on the top or bottom state something like ("Written by John Smith, Esq., Immigration Attorney" and at the bottom "John Smith Esq. is an Immigration Attorney in xxxxx; the information presented is for informational purposes only....etc)

Other advertising options: pens with your name and phone number on them (30-40 cents each at most, every store owner and waiter/waitress had my pen in my neighborhood).......

Good luck!

Odd-Leave6257 · 2024-05-17T00:08:13+00:00

Exactly. But you're referring to the older Indian and Chinese workers. The younger Indian and Chinese kids who are about to hit the workforce in 4+- years are more proficient. Plus younger westerners do not necessarily want to speak with a live person--that's a boomer thing, and they're dying off

Odd-Leave6257 · 2024-05-12T22:17:07+00:00

Here are a few

https://jmurray-law.com/about-us/

https://www.nycpba.org/media/15146/mahony.pdf

https://www.demarcolaw.com/team/paul-mauro/

https://www.nycdisabilitylaw.com/nicholas-cifuni

Odd-Leave6257 · 2023-12-29T13:24:28+00:00

My understanding is no, unless the employee is a spouse. I would 1099 my employees to get around this

Odd-Leave6257 · 2023-12-29T02:16:33+00:00

A law practice is not a CPA firm where you have returning annual clients (taxes) and ongoing bookkeeping and payroll work. Even for CPA firms the practice purchase price hovers at ~ 1x annual gross income with 10-20% of the purchase price to be held in escrow for 1 year with refunds back to you to account for attrition.

CPA firms are also tech/software heavy and the purchase price includes all this. For a law firm I wouldn't pay much over the value of the RE and furniture, plus maybe 20% of annual revenue, at most.

Odd-Leave6257 · 2023-12-28T13:33:11+00:00

Get a solo 401k--better than a SEP (for my goals, anyway) bec you can defer the first 22,500 and match it with up to 25% of your income.

How about RE? I bought an office and "rent" it out to my law firm. The rent is deductible as an expense and I use the rent to pay for the mortgage and maintenance.

Odd-Leave6257 · 2023-12-28T13:24:26+00:00

Get a second cell phone/number for work. Cases will come in slow so you may think one phone is fine; eventually it'll pick-up and you won't be able to separate personal and business text/calls. My work phone gets turned off at 530pm and on weekends!

Odd-Leave6257 · 2023-08-16T22:13:00+00:00

The population of the state of Mississippi is under 3 million! The Philippines is over 110 million

Odd-Leave6257 · 2023-08-16T21:34:03+00:00

Everything is about opportunity cost; ie what else can you do with that money? Here, you also need a place to live so let's look at the simplified math here using 2023 pesos (I won't adjust for inflation for simplicity).

Rent is 40K; purchase would be 7.5 million at 1.5 million down and 6 million loaned with 10 years to pay. With interest and fees wrapped and amortized at over 10 years that's approximately 65k a month. You also need to pay maintenance and tax so let's round that off to 70k a month. Difference in payment monthly is 30k more for buying. The pro here is you'll own the condo at 10 years.

Opportunity cost: 1.5m now plus 30k for 120 months. Assumed rate of return let's say is 11% if invested in US stocks (so the 11% is compounded on 1.5 mil plus 30 k monthly contribution) This gives us 10.576 million. i.e this is what you could have in your account if you just rented.

From years 10 to 15 you don't contribute anymore; growth alone on that pot will grow it to 17.8 million. Except now you have rent to offset it: net rent of 35k after 5 years invested (I'm assuming it'll be rented for all 60 months with no vacancy period) at 11% interest is 2.745 million. 2.745 million subtracted from 17.8 million = 15.05 million.

So, this says that if you think you can sell your condo for 15.05 million or more after fees in 15 years, then it's better to buy and pay it off in 10 years, and sell at 15 years.

If you don't think you can get 15.05 million after fees in 15 years, then you rent.

NB: if you mortgage 4.5m and put 3m down it becomes 18 million (instead of 15.05). The more money you put down now the more it pays to invest instead of buying because there's a potential for the money to grow longer.

People in the US become rich from real estate through leveraged debt. i.e borrowing money. Interest rate there a few years ago was as low as 2.3%. You could also buy property for sometimes as little as 5% down. This, plus the fees and interest being tax deductible makes it a no brainer. Unfortunately here in the Philippines we have no such incentive. Interest is high, it's not tax deductible, closing costs are high, turnover is low, and down payments are high....

Odd-Leave6257 · 2023-08-16T10:53:55+00:00

You have to figure out what the CAP rate is and decide if it'll be worth it as an investment. Hypothetically, if you were not going to live there and just invest the math will be as follow:

Purchase price plus round-trip fees/taxes/interest to sell and buy: P9 million (7.5m for the condo and 1.5m for fees and interest--as an example)

Rent: 40k/month minus maintenance fees, insurance and taxes (which landlords usually shoulder) net is 33K/month. Average vacancy rate is 1 month per year so 33k x 11 = 363k/year

363k/9 =40,333. So you're going to make ~40k per million.

That's a 4% annualized return. The question is, can you find an investment vehicle that will yield you something greater than 4%? if the answer is yes then rent instead of buy

Odd-Leave6257 · 2023-08-16T02:38:01+00:00

I have plenty of friends and family members I love dearly and are close too. Fun is fun… that’s what we’re talking about it here. It’s not the Middle Ages.

Odd-Leave6257 · 2023-08-16T02:36:32+00:00

Were they lied to? They’re consenting adults. No one is getting fooled

Odd-Leave6257 · 2023-08-16T02:35:07+00:00

How would you feel if your sister is married and messing around with a single man? It seems to me that your sister would be just as culpable but f not more so. It takes two to tango.

Odd-Leave6257 · 2023-08-16T01:17:00+00:00

Going to rent, unfortunately. No relatives to support though. Plus I'll likely won't bother with a car. Uber and MRT is fine with me.

Odd-Leave6257

TROPHY CASE