Source: a friendly customer is an attorney specializing in just that.
If you know an exception, that's great, please connect me. kyle@kemitchell.com. If they're actually specialized in high-stakes copyright litigation among firms with legal budgets in the millions, there's no need. I know those folks. I wouldn't refer small or solo firms at their rates. I'd suggest they may not be adequately adjusting for scale. Nobody sees the whole industry.
As for the view from my own two eyes, I have absolutely billed solo-developer clients for work on settlements and license deals following license violations who were happy to pay and came away with a nice profit. I have also seen developers drive lucrative deals pointing out violations of license terms without any attorney assistance at all.
Yes, I am. The attorney's goals are not aligned with developer's goals because developer pays the attorney, not that the attorney pays the developer. Attorney makes money from developer(s) regardless of a developer(s) making money off the violation. It is bonkers that seemingly educated people do not understand this.
Fighting IP battles from a perspective of a little party that has IP against a giant that is violating little party's IP is a fool's errand. Rarely the fool wins. That's why there's no market for litigation financing in IP like it exists for litigation financing of ambulance chasing.
I don't need to - you, as an attorney, are not going to take every case on contingency. You are only going to take cases that you think you are going to win and you are likely to collect. In most of cases you would require a minimum payment from a client. In those cases the client will probably be fucked.