Does anyone have any actual first hand experience of what the take home of a successful class action litigator is? I’m just a bit wary of accepting that, on average, they’d do as well as one might gain the impression they do. Sure, when they hit it big they take home millions (and that’s what hits the headlines), but wouldn’t they also go for long periods of time totally unremunerated, supporting big teams of lawyers, funding out-of-pockets etc? Plus I imagine they only hit it big a few times over their career. I wonder what their lifetime earnings amounts to. I also wonder if there aren’t a few big names making a splash, but a lot of others scraping by.
I could be dead wrong about this, but I just wonder whether they aren’t a bit like gamblers: you hear all about it when they hit the jackpot, but you don’t hear a word about the day to day losses.
I’m a full equity partner in a city firm (only medium sized though). I spend far too much time considering tedious things like overheads and profitability. I am very aware that a particular area of practice can seem busy and profitable but on closer inspection is not, and vice versa.
Anecdotally speaking, Peter Angelos, who once owned the Baltimore Orioles, was a PI lawyer who made his money in class action asbestos litigation. Presidential candidate John Edwards also made millions doing PI (medical malpractice, I believe). So I would agree that PI can be quite lucrative.
More generally, though, the law is like any profession - the better you are at your chosen field, the better you can do. Be the best at something and you’ll make good money, regardless of what particular field you are in.
FWIW, I’m a real estate attorney. Although I certainly don’t make lots of money (it’s too soon in my career, I suppose), my bosses are making really good money off the (unfortunate) booming foreclosure market.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that high-end international tax lawyers doing transactional work bring in approximately 15 - 20 million a year. Actually, any equity partner at a large corporate firm is probably going to make 5 - 10 million+ per year, give or take. The trick is getting to the equity partner level at firms like that. Not an easy task.
If you’re talking about solo practice or small firm people though, in general, I’d say on average your top slot is going to be a patent prosecution attorney. It’s a limited speciality - not a lot of people (proportionately speaking) go to law school in possession of the undergraduate degrees required to be eligible to sit the Agent’s Exam (patent bar).
A plaintiff’s-side PI or class action attorney is probably your best bet for the single-hit strike-it-rich payment, but it’s rather like winning the lottery. I worked for a time for a plaintiff’s-side PI who was hustling constantly and barely making ends meet - and he wasn’t a bad attorney. Those are very much luck-of-the-draw sorts of areas. If a client with a fabulous case walks through your door (as opposed to one of your competitors), then you can make a whole lot of money in a hurry - but there’s no guarantee that that’ll happen. Plus, there are a certain percentage of PI and class-action cases that never even break even - they cost the attorney money. In some areas of law, the percentage is as high as 60%.
Has the market changed that much since I’ve left the big firms? I used to work for the two largest law firms in the world and I used to hang out at Greedy Associates, and I’ve never heard anyone make that kind of coin. Traditionally, I’d say the areas bringing in the most coin are M&A and some type of Banking or Securities area. These are easily combinable areas and are more time intensive than the other naturally occurring area of law, taxation. I would put commercial transactions ahead of taxation (international or otherwise). On the commercial transaction deals that I worked on, tax had only a small piece of it. I spent a great deal of time just trying to draft the thing, much less than trying to negotiate it.
Here’s where I would put estates and trusts, but specifically, it’s the financial planning side of it. Of course, this requires volume, which is something that one can’t easily generate out of the general public if one were trying to find the patent dollar.
Most PI attorneys on the small scale are generally playing the lottery, I agree. But as with any small practice, the success of which is more dependent on good fiscal policy and business management rather than the type of law practiced. Even divorce lawyers specialists can make some serious coin out there and not have to put up with bullshit firm politics and the general stress of finding billable hours.
Being a patent litigator is not the same thing as being a patent agent. One works to obtain a patent for an inventor, the other protects a patent from infringement. My brother the patent litigator does not have a science or engineering degree, and is not a member of the patent bar.
of firm reported profits per partner from 2002. Granted it’s from 5 years ago, and PPP has surely gone up since then, but in 2002, there were only 3 firms with PPP of greater than 2 million. And only 15 firms with PPP greater than 1 million.
Note also that these are self-reported numbers and with the exception of bankruptcy firms are probably exaggerated.
If firm profits are $1million per partner, obviously a typical partner won’t be making $5 to 10 million. I would guess that at the very very most, 2 or 3 rainmakers in such a firm might possibly be earning money in the range you mentioned.
I disgree with this too. A patent prosecution attorney generally works piecemeal or by the hour. So he or she will always be limited by the number of hours in a year.
IME it is pretty tough to get clear figures on this type of thing, but when I have looked up firm earnings in the past, I did not get the impression that they would support anywhere near 5-10 mill per equity partner.
And I recall reading an article a few years back about Dan Webb, a true superstar in the private practice world, and IIRC it had him making something in the $1-2 mill range. At that time, it really impressed me how poorly his pay compared to - say - folks at the top of the entertainment or sports fields, CEOs, etc.
But no, I am not, never have been, and never will be a partner at a large firm.