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by msandford 4441 days ago
Law is consulting. The business is selling hours. You can only sell as many hours as you have lawyers. Highly motivated lawyers might bill 2-5x the hours of less motivated ones, or at a much, much higher rate.

The "enterprise value" of a law firm is very near zero because as the partners stop paying attention to everything the company falls apart.

Most startups make a product which can be sold largely independent of the number of hours worked by the employees. Certainly in a non-linear fashion. As a result a startup might have a substantial non-zero enterprise value.