Here's How Much 'Billboard Lawyers' Actually Make (Backed By Data)

This is great. I don't go on FatFire as much as you do. Um, I do it from time to time, but I don't like, I don't know, I need to like add it to my feed or whatever. Uh, but yeah, this is great. 38 years old, $15 million, $15 million net worth, not 5. Uh, so $15.8. Uh, and then the $6 million annual income is actually the more stunning part. Like I'm not surprised that a lawyer at 40 can have $15 million in net worth. It's the $6 million annual income that's sort of like stunning, which makes me want to understand this personal injury lawyer business better. Like he says, like, you know, I do no marketing. I basically just hand out business cards plus I get referrals from my existing clients. Um, but that is a ton. That is a ton of like take home from your, like your legal practice. I don't think that's common. So I wonder what he's doing that's uncommon.

Dude. All right. I have, wow. Some, I have something interesting that I saw, Sean. I posted a link to the subreddit, to, to this Reddit post that I saw right before I logged into this, uh, to the podcast, and I linked it to you. So basically there's this subreddit called FatFire that I like. I've sent it to you, and every once in a while you get these amazing stories about people because they reveal like their income and things like that. And I've been following this lawyer, he's a 38-year-old.

Explain what FatFire is.

Yeah. So fat, I don't know what fat FIRE stands for. FIRE stands for Financially Independent Retired Early. Traditionally, it's like a movement of people who want to save like $500,000 to $1 million and live off of like $30,000 or $40,000 a year. That's not exactly what it means, but that's like traditionally, like with the stereotype, fat FIRE means you want to retire early and be financially independent, but you want to be doing it fat. So you want to like, you know, save like $20 million or something like that. So you wanna start a company, sell it, and retire. And so it's people who wanna retire while they're young and, uh, do it by still living, living lavishly. And it sounds douchey, but it's actually quite interesting. It's all like entrepreneurs, bankers, tech people who like work at a— it's just like rich people shit. And which is always fun to like be voyeuristic. And so there's this guy, he's a 38-year-old personal injury lawyer. And for the past 4 years, he's given an update every couple of years and he explains everything that's going on in his business. And so his background is basically that he was a normal— he went to a good school and then worked at one of the big law firms, which is like something that you like grind for 80 hours a week and hopefully climb your way up, and eventually you make a million dollars a year after 10 or 15 years. But it's kind of boring, and you're like kind of like the— your boss's bitch for a long time, and it just kind of sucks. And so he goes, you know what, screw this. A friend of his got hurt, and he goes, hey, I'll represent you, uh, just pay me whatever's fair. And then he did, and he won. And then a Few other people started coming to him, just word of mouth. And so he was doing this in the evenings, uh, while he was still working his main job. And after a year he quit to do his own thing. That's when his, uh, income from his moonlighting became bigger than his normal thing. So fast forward now, um, I believe it's been about 8 years since he's been doing this. So 2014 to 2022, and he's listed out his income as well as his net worth, breaking it down by assets for every single year. So in year 1, it was $300,000, 2, $600,000. $800,000, $1.2 million, $3 million, $5.6 million, $6 million, $6 million. And this year so far, $3.3 million, and it's going to be $8 million this year. And that's personal income. Basically, he, he has these posts where he breaks down exactly how his businesses work, what his current plan is, what his growth challenges are, what his marketing is. And basically he's got like 5 attorneys that work for him and he's slowly built up to that. He gets a little bit of cut of all that they have. Uh, they have 300 cases that they do a year. Um, he talks about Grow Challenges, which is that they're struggling with the CRM. They don't have a CRM. Everything's done manually, manually, and it's a lot of work. And one of his goal— this goals is to automate a lot of stuff. But it's incredibly fascinating for two reasons. One, this is a sick business, right? Like, it's like a, just a 37-year-old smart person, but he doesn't seem like that particularly extraordinary, but he's like killing it now. He says that his net worth is currently $5.8 million. And his kids have a trust fund of $1.7 million. And then secondly, why this is cool for a couple of reasons. One, Alex Hormozi had this business. Alex Hormozi was a guest here. He had this business called Gym Launch where he basically worked with gyms where he— that you paid him $20,000 or $30,000 and he set up your whole CRM and he set up all the automated emails for onboarding and just kind of set up the automation flow. Someone should do that for these personal injury attorneys. This is awesome. They have way more money than gyms and probably just as many of them. I have no idea, but probably. Um, I don't know. What do you think about this post? This is pretty cool, right?

This is great. I don't go on FatFire as much as you do. Um, I do it from time to time, but I don't like, I don't know, I need to like add it to my feed or whatever. Uh, but yeah, this is great. 38 years old, $15 million net worth, not 5. Uh, so $15.8. Uh, and then the $6 million annual income is actually the more stunning part. Like I'm not surprised that a lawyer at 40 can have $15 million in net worth. It's the $6 million in annual income that's sort of like stunning, which makes me want to understand this personal injury lawyer business better. Like he says, like, you know, I do no marketing. I basically just hand out business cards plus I get referrals from my existing clients. Um, but that is a ton. That is a ton of like take home from your, like your legal practice. I don't think that's common. So I wonder what he's doing that's uncommon. Like he talks about, look, these cases basically like, You know, it's not about more cases. Like, 300 cases could end up being worth more than 3,000 cases because you, you know, you get paid based on the outcome, you know, the, the profits of the, of the cases. But man, is that kind of weird?

Like, no, I don't think that's— so this guy's in Southern California, so maybe he's in San Diego, so it's a pretty big city. But I think if you look at the top 20 cities in America, if you look at the billboards, it's always personal injury lawyers. And there's this one guy in in Austin, and Austin's like a top 15 city maybe. And he says that his earnings are— I forget exactly what it says his earnings are, but I looked him up on Instagram and he's got a collection of like 15 Ferraris. He was in the newspaper because he had a birthday party for his daughter or for himself, and he had like Rod Stewart or someone crazy, and he spent like $3 million on that. And they talked about his home, and he was donating checks for $2 or $3 million, and that was in Austin. Uh, his name was Thomas, I think, something Thomas. And I think I know a personal injury attorney in St. Louis and he's got a mansion in Miami. He's got a place in St. Louis where we're from. I mean, I think some of these guys could, could really roll in it and be netting 10 or 20 a year.

Yeah, this is, it's wild. And I like that idea of the, the, the gym launch for X. Um, I think you're right with lawyers.