Plenty of lawyers charge $500/hour or more, why shouldn't engineers? Having a PhD and domain expertise in a niche field seems at least as valuable as a law degr

Plenty of lawyers charge $500/hour or more, why shouldn't engineers? Having a PhD and domain expertise in a niche field seems at least as valuable as a law degree. If you're working on a project that's driving $1 billion / year in revenue even a 0.01% increase is $100k/year. It's pretty easy to justify $25k on a contractor if they can demonstrate even a very modest impact on your project.