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It's in the linked article:

"I’ve spent about 200 hours on the matter and Sabrina about another 80. My comparable market hourly rate (partner at a top NYC patent firm) would be $750 and a comparable rate for Sabrina (senior associate at a top patent firm) would be about $500."

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Okay, so that is equivalent to 1 person working 40 hour weeks for 7 weeks. So, one person pulling $6K a day. ($1.5M/yr) I think you could find legal support for less than that.

Assuming they could maintain that for a full year, $6K a day is only 2.2MM. Also keep in mind that these hotshots don't do much of the grunt work, they offload it to any number of junior associates (which that hourly rate has to cover, in addition to other business overhead). Still not a bad gig if you can get it.

Keep in mind that a partner at a top firm who bills her time out at $750, is making a lot more than that, due to the nature of a legal partnership.

Any associate work will be billed straight through. Nobody works for free.

Even if the rate was 10% of their quote, it's still $20k. Which is no laughing matter.

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