I have a friend who does this. He told me the financials over the years as we talked through some of his cases over drinks. His mentor won the big tobbaco settl

I have a friend who does this. He told me the financials over the years as we talked through some of his cases over drinks. His mentor won the big tobbaco settlement which gave the lawyers a cut of $7B. He ended up making a low SDE2 salary averaged out over 10 years and had to put up significant cash and take big loans from his mentor to cover things. His mentor had to give back most of the 1/2B settlement split 7 ways when the case was reversed around 7 years later. This was a massive payday. But the firm put out millions on research / experts in cases over the years. It's very much VC Firm in many ways. In his first 7 years my friend I think was in the hole $700k for the cases, which on average took 3.5 years. Most of the cases barely made any money or lost money. One of those cases paid off enough that he was able to pay off the loans and get to he made this average salary. I know it was very stressful. He also had a different relationship with debt than I did.