$150 to $200 per hour’s not too shabby…
From Start Up Journal…
The entrepreneur: Gary Kessler, 52, is an associate professor of computer science at Champlain College in Burlington, Vt.
The business: Mr. Kessler has worked as a computer-forensics consultant on the side for the past five years. Computer forensics is the process of gathering evidence from a computer. “Frequently, you are looking at files that someone thinks are deleted,” Mr. Kessler says. “It turns out that when you use a computer almost everything you do leaves traces, and it is next to impossible to delete information from a computer.”
His primary clients are Burlington-area law firms involved in civil litigation, such as cases involving hacking and embezzlement. “But, for better or for worse, most of the cases I have been involved in lately are divorce cases that have turned ugly and [the lawyers] feel there is critical information on the computers,” Mr. Kessler says.
Getting started: Many college professors consult in their academic fields — it’s one way to stay current while supplementing an academic salary. Mr. Kessler’s route to consulting in computer forensics was hardly typical, however.
“I really stumbled into this,” Mr. Kessler says. “When I started at this college, I had no expectation of necessarily doing any consulting. But the first call came a month after coming to college.”
Prior to becoming a full-time professor at Champlain College in 2000, Mr. Kessler had spent close to 25 years working with computers — first as a computer programmer, then working with networks and more recently as an information-security consultant.
His first moonlighting job in the field of computer forensics came in 1997, he says, when a local police officer he knew asked for some computer advice on a case he was working. Mr. Kessler says that was his informal introduction to computer forensics.
Two years later, when the Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force was established, he was asked to serve as a civilian technical consultant, he says.
A year later, he took his first computer-forensics case. A lawyer called a computer-consulting firm he had previously worked with. The lawyer wanted a computer-forensic analysis done for a case. The firm, having never done such an analysis, passed along Mr. Kessler’s name.
The business plan: Mr. Kessler admits that he could probably plan the business a little better, but points out that it’s a side venture that already keeps him sufficiently busy. He doesn’t advertise, relying instead on word of mouth for new jobs. “Frankly, the reason I don’t advertise is that I am afraid of the amount of business that I would get,” he says.
He consults for several law firms. But he won’t work on criminal cases, he says, because he doesn’t want to damage the relationship he’s established with the local police through the Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
For the most part, he says he won’t spend more 20 hours per month consulting and won’t allow it to exceed more than 10 hours a week. He usually charges between $150 and $200 an hour, although he admits to not having worked out a standard fee.
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