The only time I ever earned consultant money as a linguist came a few years
ago when a local attorney phoned me at the university. He had written a
contract for his client that another party was interpreting in a way harmful
to his client's interests. That party's lawyer presented an extended parsing
of one very lengthy sentence complete with a Reed-Kellogg diagram of it.
This shook up the lawyer, and he asked me to analyze it. I told him a case
could be made for a more favorable interpretation of the sentence, and I
wrote it up, complete with a different diagram showing that interpretation.
It worked, and his client won the case. The fact is that he wrote a badly
ambiguous sentence, but apparently it came down to which parsing job the
judge found more impressive.

Not being in the consultant business, I had no idea what to charge the
lawyer when he asked, but I knew lawyers bill by the hour, so I pulled out
the figure of $200 per hour for my time. He accepted this, so we were both
happy.

Dick Veit
Department of English
UNCW

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