You Won the Lottery. Now Find a Lawyer Who Won't Rob You: A Field Guide

Somebody on Reddit asked the most sensible question a lottery fantasist can ask: "If I win the jackpot, how do I actually find a good lawyer, accountant and financial advisor — without getting robbed by any of them?" It's a good question. It's also the least fun question in the whole lottery genre, which is probably why the replies are an absolute goldmine.

I make my living staring at lotto numbers, so this thread landed in my lap like a gift. Here's the thing: nobody in that thread agreed on who you should hire, but they agreed on how you should think about it — and the pattern is so clear I could print it on a ticket.

First, the replies that made me snort

Before the serious stuff, the thread's finest moments:

• Someone's "professional" advice for a fresh winner: "Sir, I would suggest you double down with your winnings — you could have a great chance of a second lottery win." Yes. That is exactly what a financial advisor who has your best interests at heart would say.
• A true optimist: "Hell yeah, I only need to buy 134,490,000 entries to guarantee a Div 1 win!" Mathematically correct. Financially a nightmare. Spiritually unmatched.
• The universally loved one-liner: "Don't worry, you won't win." Which is technically the most honest financial advice in the entire thread.
• And the classic: "Win first, ask later." Listen. That should be tattooed somewhere.

The six things everyone actually agreed on

Strip away the jokes and the thread lands on six genuinely useful points. This is the consensus distilled:

1. You don't automatically need professionals — you need complexity

The top-voted serious reply (334 upvotes) made the point that should headline every lottery guide: winning the lotto doesn't itself require a lawyer, accountant or advisor. Lotto winnings in Australia and New Zealand are tax-free windfalls. If your plan is "pay off the mortgage, go travelling, dump the rest in an index fund" — congratulations, your needs are not complex. You don't need a war room. You need a spreadsheet and a boring afternoon.

The moment you start building trusts, buying businesses, structuring estates or planning around foreign assets — that's when the professionals earn their fee. The money isn't the reason to hire them. The complexity is.

2. If you do hire: bigger is safer

A repeated theme: don't hire the small-town superstar — hire the big firm where your millions are pocket change. One commenter put it perfectly: go to the biggest law firm in town and ask for a partner who earns ten million a year, because to someone like that, your jackpot is sofa change, and sofa change is not worth stealing. A tax partner in the private wealth division of a Big 4 firm will "save you more money and make more money for them" — but they're not siphoning off your funds.

One lawyer in the thread said the secret is simpler than people think: high-net-worth clients are common; any competent, practicing professional will look after you. And if they try to fob you off with a junior associate, walk out and find another firm.

3. "Independent" is the magic word

For financial advisors specifically, the thread had a clear answer: find one who charges a fixed fee and takes no commission — an independent financial adviser. The Aussie-specific tip was to look at associations of fee-only advisers (PIFA was named twice), because a "financial advisor" who gets paid a percentage of your money has a permanent incentive to keep your money with them. That's not a conspiracy; it's just incentives doing their thing.

Worth noting too: several commenters said a registered tax agent might be more useful than a financial advisor, and that every credential is publicly verifiable. If they won't show you their registration, that's your answer.

4. Hire two, and make them not like each other

The best structural advice in the whole thread came from NBA player Giannis Antetokounmpo via a Redditor: your lawyer, your accountant and your financial advisor should not know one another. Independence keeps everyone honest. One commenter's version was even simpler: hire two accountants — one to do the books, one to check the books. Another: hire two, one audits the other. This is the "mutually assured accountability" strategy, and it costs a little extra to buy a lot of peace of mind.

The reason this matters: 60% of retired NBA players go broke within six years of retirement. Their advisors weren't all villains — most just never had their work checked by anyone.

5. The six-month rule is real

Multiple commenters who'd clearly read the lottery-agency playbook repeated the same advice: keep working, don't buy anything big, don't gift money to anyone, and say nothing for six months.

Why six months? Two reasons floated: distance and shock. It's much harder for scammers to connect you to a jackpot that happened months ago, and it takes roughly that long for your brain to stop going "HOLY SHIT I HAVE A HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS" and start making boring, sensible decisions. One commenter noted you become a scam magnet the second people know — not just online scammers, but "family and friends" and people at your door. The 6-month rule isn't paranoia. It's a perimeter.

6. Say nothing. To anyone.

And I mean anyone who isn't legally bound to keep your secret. The thread's crowd-favourite financial plan was brutally simple: "If you win over a million, don't tell anyone. If you win under a million, tell everyone you paid off your house." A lawyer and accountant can even help you gift money anonymously later. But the single most effective asset-protection strategy in existence is a closed mouth.

The cautionary tales (because we need them)

The thread had its dark corners too, and they're worth remembering:

• One commenter told a story about a woman who won the lottery down the road from them — and was killed by her own accountant, who tried to steal it. Not a metaphor. Actual news. This is the nightmare scenario the whole thread is trying to prevent.
• The NBA stat again: a large chunk of pro athletes — people with lottery-money careers — end up broke. Latrell Sprewell turned down $21 million because he "had a family to feed," never got another offer, and went bankrupt anyway.
• And the reminder nobody wants: winning a lot seems to crack something in people's heads about being lucky, and more than a few winners gamble it all away within a few years.

The pro-level recommendation

A few commenters pointed to a genuinely useful real-world resource: the Money Money Money podcast (with Glen James) had a $30 million lottery winner on earlier this year, walked through exactly what they did — the structure, the tax planning, the $120k a month in interest, and how it was minimised. If you want a real case study instead of a Reddit thread, that's the one to dig up. Several financial planners now specialise specifically in "large windfall gains," which is a sentence I enjoy typing.

Mia's honest wrap-up

Here's my take, as someone who reads lottery numbers for a living: the odds of you needing this advice are roughly 1 in 3,838,380 per line — but the odds of you enjoying the fantasy are 1 in 1. So plan the fantasy, by all means. Just keep the plan proportional to the fantasy, and treat the whole thing as entertainment, because that's what it is.

And if you ever do win? Follow the thread's rules: keep working, say nothing, wait six months, hire a big-firm partner who thinks your millions are sofa change, hire a fee-only independent adviser, make sure none of them know each other — and for the love of everything, do not buy 134,490,000 tickets to "guarantee" a win. That number is real. I checked.

This article summarises public discussion from Reddit's r/AusFinance and is for entertainment. It is not financial, legal or tax advice. Lotto draws are random; NZ winnings are tax-free windfalls; play within your means.