DBM Legal Services — Earnings Model

Break your
solo ceiling.

Reclaim your time, or redeploy it.

As a solo, you're capped — covering admin and every client hour yourself. When DBM absorbs the back-office and puts a team underneath your work, hours open up that you could never reach before. Take them back for the life you want, or refill them as billable work. Plug in your numbers and see what the choice is worth.

Modeling a solo billing $300/hr × 25 hrs/wk — about a $390K book. Adjust below, or jump to a size.

Your 18 freed hours — your choice

Take the time back, or make every hour billable

DBM removes admin and puts a team under your client work, freeing 18hrs/week. Solo, you could never refill them — you were capped covering everything yourself. Now they're yours to deploy.

Reclaim the time
$263K
working 17 hrs/wk — about the same money, 18 hrs/wk of your life back.
Redeploy into billable
$475K
working 35 hrs/wk — same effort as today, but all of it billable. +$202K vs solo.
Your mix now (50% redeployed) — 26 hrs/wk · adjust under Your Freed Hours below$369K net + $59K growth
The rate behind it — solo vs. DBM
Solo — per billable hour
$210/hr
net, after overhead
Your weekly hours
25hrs
Billable
10hrs
Admin drag
35hrs
Total
DBM — per billable hour
$352/hr
net, after fee share & team costs
or $274/hr across all 26 hrs/wk, incl. BD
Your weekly hours
12hrs
Billable
2hrs
Internal
3hrs
BD growth
26hrs
Total
Total opportunity
$428K
net retained + BD growth
Net retained (annualized)$369K
BD book-growth upside+$59K
vs. solo net ceiling ($273K, after overhead)+$155K
Capacity freed
Existing client work → team13 hrs/wk
Admin → DBM Ops10 hrs/wk
Total freed9 hrs/wk
Hours — solo vs. DBM
35 hrs/wk
Solo (billable + admin)
$150/hrnet/hr
→
26 hrs/wk
DBM (billable + BD) · 9 hrs freed
$274/hrnet/hr

Inputs

Adjust solo capacity, DBM team leverage, and BD reinvestment assumptions.

Solo Baseline
DBM Team Coverage
Team covers 13 hrs/weekCovers all 13 redistributed hrs
Your HoursYour time
Client Billing
Internal Billing
DBM PartnersTeam support
Senior CounselDBM senior
DBM Fee ShareFirm economics
Business Development Upside
Your 18 Freed Hours
← 9 hrs reclaimed9 hrs billable →
How you redeploy them
Mix is normalized to 100%. Adds $2,036/wk net ($105,885/yr).
Solo net ceiling
$273K
Gross $390K minus $117K practice overhead (30%)
DBM net earnings opportunity
$428K
Net retained after fee share & team costs, plus projected BD upside
Admin opportunity cost
$78K
10 hours/week valued at $150/hr
Projected book growth
$59K
15% lift on a $390K book

Solo Ceiling

Every hour you work — billable or not — counts against your effective rate.

Net ceiling, after overhead
$273,000
gross $390K − 30% overhead
Net rate, all hours worked
$150/hr
across 35 hours/wk (billable + admin)

DBM Model

A team carries your client work and admin disappears — so you keep more and the firm absorbs overhead.

Annual net retained
$369,109
after fee share & team costs · 26 hrs/wk
Team margin you can't earn solo
+$95K/yr
income that needs a team underneath you
Overhead the firm now carries
+$117K/yr
malpractice, office, software, staff — covered by fee share

The number that actually matters

Annual totals hide the real story. The question worth asking: for every hour you actually bill, what do you take home — solo, versus with a team underneath you?

Solo, per billable hour
$210/hr
net, after overhead
→
+67%
DBM, per billable hour
$352/hr
net, after fee share & team costs

Apples-to-apples: both are what you net per hour of legal work you actually bill — solo after 30%overhead, DBM after fee share and team costs (the firm carries overhead). Business-development time and book growth aren't in this number; the chart below shows what happens when you count BD too.

Solo, each hour you bill nets you $210/hr after the 30% overhead of running your own shop. With DBM, you keep 12 billing hrs plus 2 internal hrs and a team carries the rest — and the leverage means each of your billing hours nets $352/hr, with the firm absorbing the overhead you used to pay yourself.

But the bigger story is the 18 hours a week DBM frees up. Solo, you could never use them — you were capped covering admin and all your own client work. Now you choose. Reclaim them and you net $263K working 17 hrs/week — roughly today's income with 18 hours of your life back. Or redeploy them into more of your own matters, joint engagements with DBM partners, and internal overflow — work back up to 35 hrs/week, the same effort you put in today, except now every hour is billable. That path nets $475K — $202K more than solo.

And the 10 hours DBM Ops absorbs don't vanish either — 3 of them go to business development. On a $390K book at a 15% growth assumption, that's $59K of annual book growth layered on top of whichever path you pick.

Remove operating dragDBM Ops handles engagement letters, intake, invoicing, bookkeeping, trust account work, and back-office administration.
Add attorney leverageDBM team members expand matter capacity while you stay focused on client relationships, judgment, and strategy.
Reclaim or redeployFreed hours are yours to keep as time back, or refill as billable work — own matters, joint DBM engagements, internal overflow — that a solo could never reach.

What an hour returns — including BD time

The rate above is per billing hour. Here's the same comparison with your business-development hours folded in — the time that builds your book instead of billing now.

Uplift, all hours
+30%
Soloper billable hour, net
$210/hr
DBM — billing hoursper hour you actually bill
$352/hr
DBM — all hours, incl. BD26 hrs/wk · adds 3 BD hrs to the denominator
$274/hr
Lower on purpose — this counts your 3 weekly BD hours as worked time even though they don't bill. That time isn't lost: it drives $59K/yr of book growth, counted separately.

This calculator is for illustrative purposes only. All figures are pre-tax and exclude any individual tax treatment; it is not a guarantee of performance, compensation, or results, and is not tax, legal, or financial advice. Solo overhead is an editable estimate of real practice costs, and BD upside is a gross projected book-growth estimate. The redeploy path assumes you fill freed hours with billable work (your own matters, joint DBM engagements, or internal overflow) and that such work is available; actual demand will vary. Team hours default to the attorney's redistributed existing book — the model does not assume new client demand to generate team billings.