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Money talks: how do consultant lawyers make a living?
Everyone worries about money matters from time to time, but we are often surprisingly reticent when it comes to talking about money.
We think it’s about time we were all a bit more up-front about money. Whether you are currently a law firm employee, partner or employed in-house you need to know that becoming a consultant lawyer might actually be the right commercial choice for you. And not just a lifestyle choice.
At Nexa we know that financial considerations are often upper most in the minds of people thinking about joining us and that’s entirely understandable as they try to decide whether to take a leap of faith and move their career in a different direction.
In this blog, we will be exploring how we deliver a fair share of income to our consultant lawyers and what that looks like.
The status quo?
The talent war and ever increasing six- figure starting salaries of newly qualified lawyers at City (particularly American) firms have been hitting the headlines recently. But in most traditional UK law firms, senior lawyer and partner salaries (or profit drawings for equity partners) are often around 30% of the income you generate for the firm. Given the sacrifices and effort required, many lawyers might legitimately ask, is it all worth it? Consultant lawyers should expect to take home at least 70% of the income they generate for their umbrella, regulated firm (and even higher if they are able to support their clients from an unregulated entity). And at Nexa you get even more than that.
How does it work at Nexa?
At Nexa, it really is easy to increase your earnings. We deduct a fee for all the support services we provide to enable our consultant lawyers to run their own legal business. This is calculated on a sliding scale that reduces with the amount of fees generated but, the minimum amount of fees you get to keep is 75% and this can go as high as 85%. If you work on client matters generated by another Nexa consultant lawyer or Nexa itself, which are referred to you, then you can expect to take home between 50% and 60% of the client fee.
As a consultant lawyer it is possible to run a very lean business without significant set-up or running costs. Without the ongoing costs that traditional law firms spend on keeping -up appearances, or on historical IT servers and hardware for example, you get to keep more of the fees your clients pay.
What’s the Nexa difference?
You’ll get to keep more of the money you earn with us than with our regulated “new model” competitors in the market – wecertainly give our lawyer more “bang for their buck”! Check out our income calculator to see how much more of your billed income you could retain as a consultant with Nexa.