Legal Nurse Consultant Income Calculator

1. Enter your billable rate, the hours you work each week and the weeks you work each year.
2. Enter the share of hours you cannot bill, the share of invoices that go unpaid, and your monthly business expenses. Add testimony hours when you bill them at a separate rate.
3. Enter your set-aside percentage and a salary to compare.

A legal nurse consultant income calculator is a tool that converts an hourly billing rate into the salary it really equals. It answers one question: what does this practice pay me for a year of work?

The American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants (AALNC) describes a legal nurse consultant as a licensed registered nurse who analyses clinical issues in the legal arena. The work it lists includes organising and analysing health records, preparing chronologies of medical events, educating attorneys on clinical facts, and testifying as a nurse expert or fact witness. It names law firms, the insurance industry, risk management programs, case management agencies and litigation support firms as places of practice.

No official pay figure exists for the specialty. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes no wage series for legal nurse consultants. AALNC itself says one salary is difficult to determine because hourly rates vary so widely. This page therefore shows no average, no rate range and no certification premium. Wages for all registered nurses are on the registered nurse salary calculator, in the related tools below.

Two other tools on this site overlap in part. The freelancer hourly rate calculator starts from an income goal and finds the rate you need. The creator salary calculator adds up income streams. This page starts from a rate you already charge and adds unpaid invoices and testimony hours.

The calculator finds the hours you can bill, prices them, removes what is never collected, and then removes expenses and your set-aside.

1. It removes the non-billable share from your weekly hours and multiplies by your working weeks.
2. It prices those hours at your rate and adds testimony hours at their own rate.
3. It reduces billed revenue by the share of invoices never paid.
4. It subtracts a year of business expenses to get profit.
5. It takes off your set-aside. No set-aside is taken when the year shows a loss.
6. It divides the result by all hours worked to show pay per hour.

The set-aside is what makes the result comparable with a salary. An employee has Social Security and Medicare taxes withheld and may receive paid leave. An independent consultant funds these from profit. You choose the percentage; the page does not know your tax position.

Example values only, not typical earnings. A consultant bills $125 an hour and works 30 hours a week for 46 weeks. 40% of that time is not billable. 5% of invoices go unpaid, expenses run $600 a month, and the set-aside is 25%. An employed post pays $95,000.

A $125 rate becomes $49.52 for each hour worked. The consultant works 1,380 hours and bills 828 of them, so 552 hours earn nothing directly.

The Non-Billable Share

Finding clients, writing proposals and keeping records take time nobody pays for. Cutting the share from 40% to 30% lifts billable hours to 966 and the example to $80,634.38.

Unpaid Invoices

Work billed is not money received. The 5% written off in the example is $5,175 of revenue. With every invoice paid, the result would be $72,225.00.

Weeks Worked

Case flow is uneven, and quiet weeks earn nothing. At 48 weeks in place of 46, the example rises to $71,550.00.

Testimony at a Separate Rate

Some consultants bill deposition or trial time at a different rate. Adding 4 testimony hours a month at $200 lifts the example to $75,183.75, or $52.65 per hour worked.

Business Expenses

Every dollar of expense comes off profit. Doubling expenses to $1,200 a month lowers the example to $62,943.75.

An independent consultant and an employed one can do the same work and be paid in very different ways, so compare them on the same basis.

The IRS sets the self-employment tax rate at 15.3%: 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare. It generally applies to 92.35% of net earnings, which means profit after business expenses, not gross billings. You can deduct one-half of the tax when you figure adjusted gross income.

On the example profit of $91,125, the reference arithmetic is 92.35% of profit, or $84,153.94, times 15.3%. That gives $12,875.55, of which $6,437.78 is the deductible half. The Social Security part applies only up to a yearly earnings limit, and income tax is separate. These are reference facts, not your tax bill.

On credentials, AALNC states that certification is not required to start practising. Its LNCC credential requires 2,000 hours of work in the specialty before the exam, and renewal every 5 years. No official source publishes a pay premium for the credential, so the tool applies none.

Deciding Whether to Leave a Nursing Post

Enter your present salary as the comparison. The gap shows how far the practice is from replacing it.

Testing a Rate Before You Quote It

Change the rate and watch pay per hour worked. To work backwards from an income goal, the guide on how to set your freelance hourly rate explains the method.

Weighing an Employed Offer

The salary to hourly calculator puts a salary on an hourly basis. $95,000 is $45.67 an hour over 2,080 hours, which sits beside the $49.52 in the example.

Planning a Part-Time Start

Enter the few hours you can give each week. The second preset shows 12 hours a week alongside a job.

Budgeting Through Uneven Months

Case work arrives in bursts. The guide on budgeting on an irregular income shows how to smooth it.

1. Multiplying the Rate by 2,080 Hours

$125 times a full-time year is $260,000. The example bills 828 hours and equals a salary of $68,343.75.

2. Treating Billed Work as Cash

Slow and unpaid invoices are part of consulting. Enter the share you really write off.

3. Forgetting Non-Billable Hours

The example works 552 hours a year that no client pays for. Leaving them out inflates pay per hour.

4. Adding a Certification Premium by Assumption

No official source publishes one. Enter the rate clients actually accept.

5. Taking Tax from Gross Billings

Self-employment tax applies to net earnings after expenses. Applying a percentage to billings overstates it.

6. Comparing with a Salary Before the Set-Aside

Profit of $91,125 looks close to $95,000. After a 25% set-aside the comparable figure is $68,343.75.

The arithmetic is exact for the numbers you enter. The result is a comparison aid and is only as reliable as your own records of hours and payments.

This is an estimate, not tax or financial advice. Ask a qualified adviser before you leave an employed post.

No official figure exists. AALNC says one salary is difficult to determine because hourly rates vary widely, so this page works only from your own rate and hours.

Multiply the rate by the hours you can bill in a year, then subtract unpaid invoices, expenses and your set-aside. $125 for 828 billable hours bills $103,500.

A billable hour is time you can charge to a client for case work. Marketing, admin and study are working hours, but they are not billable.

No official source publishes a premium, so the tool applies none. AALNC says certification is not required to start practising.

AALNC states that it requires 2,000 hours of work in the specialty before the exam, and recertification every 5 years.

In the US, yes, when net earnings are $400 or more. The IRS sets the rate at 15.3% on 92.35% of net earnings.

The page cannot tell you, because it depends on your total income, deductions and state. Enter your own figure and confirm it with a tax adviser.

Unbilled hours, unpaid invoices, expenses and the set-aside all sit between the two. In the example, a $125 rate becomes $49.52 per hour worked.

An employed salary needs no conversion. Enter it as the comparison figure to see how an independent practice measures up.

That tool starts from an income goal and finds the rate you need. This one starts from your rate and finds the income, with unpaid invoices and testimony hours.

No. The maths runs in your browser and nothing is sent to us. Save keeps a result only in this browser.

• AALNC Frequently Asked Questions (American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants; what a legal nurse consultant does, where they practice, and why no single salary figure exists. Read 2026-10-02.)
• AALNC: Certification for Legal Nurse Consultants (American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants; the LNCC credential and its 5-year recertification. Read 2026-10-02.)
• IRS: Self-Employment Tax (Social Security and Medicare Taxes) (US Internal Revenue Service, page reviewed 27-Jun-2026; the 15.3% rate, its two parts, the Additional Medicare Tax thresholds and the employer-equivalent deduction. Read 2026-10-02.)
• IRS Topic No. 554, Self-Employment Tax (US Internal Revenue Service, page reviewed 24-Sep-2026; the $400 threshold, the 92.35% rule and the one-half deduction.)
• IRS: Estimated Taxes (US Internal Revenue Service, page reviewed 25-Sep-2026; who must make estimated tax payments.)