The two attorneys, West Clark and Mark Downton, were feeling pretty good.

They just gotten a 15-year-old kid at a solitary confinement, and that felt like a big

victory against Judge Davenport.

They'd also decided to team up for real, form a firm of their own called Doubten Clark.

It had no real office, no business cards, but it did have one very specific goal.

The goal was to get out. Here's Mark.

To not be juvenile court lawyers anymore, because it was too much time for too little money.

And they needed the money.

While the work of juvenile court was steady, the pay was low as far as attorneys go.

Court-appointed cases were capped at 50 bucks an hour.

West had law school loans and was still living at his mother-in-law's house.

Mark was a little more flush, thanks to a side gig doing document review for higher paid lawyers, but he also had a kid in mortgages for his house and office.

So they started a private practice that would take civil cases, personal injury, business disputes.

They knew it would take some time to really get established,

but they had faith.

They both remember an early case West brought in from adult court that seemed promising.

It was a client of mine who his foot was injured during his jail intake process.

He ended up having the foot amputated.

So we filed this lawsuit for like millions of dollars and it turned out fairly quickly we learned

that like his leg was supposed to be cut off before he ever went into jail.

So that was our first one that we thought were going to be millionaires.

Instead, they were out of pocket about 400 bucks for the filing fees,

...