A Survey Of In-House Base Pay And Bonuses
In-house columnist Mark Herrmann would like to shed more light on this important topic -- but he needs your help.
More than four years ago, I wrote a column about in-house compensation and said that I wouldn’t return to the subject for “a good long time.”
You can say many things about me (and the “commenters” certainly do), but you can’t say I’m not true to my word: I’m just now returning to the subject of compensation. (Others at Above the Law have occasionally touched on this subject in the interim, but not me.)
Four years ago, I told you that in-house compensation is not like law firm compensation. Instead of receiving an associate’s $X per year, an in-house lawyer is likely to receive some combination of base pay, a bonus, and, perhaps, some type of stock. I also pointed you to the resources of which I was then aware surveying in-house compensation. (Much of the important data, I’m sorry to say, is protected by paywalls.)
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Beyond that, however, I pleaded ignorance, because I know only what the surveys say, and those are often of limited value.
Some of the readers of my old column posted details of their personal in-house pay packages in the “comments” section (after the usual litany of criticisms of me, the horse I rode in on, my grandma, and her cat).
Anyway, a reader wrote to me a few weeks ago and asked me to write a column about the typical bonus that an in-house lawyer should expect to earn. In response, I explained that this was a good idea for a column, but I don’t have the capacity to write it. David Lat may have anointed me as some type of in-house guru (or, at a minimum, columnist), but that doesn’t give me knowledge; it just gives me a bully pulpit.
My correspondent wrote back, and it was that return email that prompted this column.
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My correspondent tells me that she (or he, but I’ll use the feminine) is a relatively junior in-house tax lawyer at a “Fortune 500” company. This person does not tell me her base pay, but she does say that her bonus has averaged about 25 to 40 percent of her base pay for each of the past five years. And she tells me that she has received merit raises of 1 percent to 2 percent per year over the same period. She doesn’t tell me a word about the stock portion, if any, of her compensation.
Ha, I thought! People of course know their own compensation, and perhaps they’d be willing to share that information — publicly, but anonymously.
So here’s what I propose: If you’re an in-house lawyer, please post in the comments to this column (1) the year in which you graduated from law school, (2) whether or not you work in a big city (which can affect comp), (3) the size of the company you work for (“Fortune 250;” “Fortune 500;” “small, privately-held, with $200 million in revenue;” or some such thing), (4) the type of work you do in-house (employment, corporate, litigation, whatever), (5) your base pay, (6) your target bonus (as a percentage of base pay), (7) your actual bonus for the last few years, (8) the average raise you’ve received over the past few years, and (9) what, if any, stock compensation you’re paid.
Some of the folks who post the comments I’ve just solicited will be insane, of course, and some will lie through their keyboards, and some will be nasty because I’ve somehow irritated them. But I suspect we’ll be able to separate the wheat from the chafed and glean from the responses roughly what lawyers can expect to be offered for different types of in-house jobs and how lawyers will be treated over time if they take those jobs. Nothing will be scientifically accurate, of course, but a collection of anecdotes soon begins to feel like evidence.
If you play along, we’ll have collectively served a public service, and perhaps we’ll create a useful online resource for folks interested in this information.
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(If you work in-house, please pass a link to this column along to your in-house colleagues, and ask them to participate anonymously in the comments, too. The more responses, the better.)
Have at it; I’ll be curious to see what the comments yield. Thanks for helping.
UPDATE (4/14/2015, 3:15 p.m.): As suggested by the “commenters,” we will be launching an anonymous survey to capture information about in-house pay and bonuses. So stay tuned.
Mark Herrmann is the Chief Counsel – Litigation and Global Chief Compliance Officer at Aon, the world’s leading provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, and human capital and management consulting. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Inside Straight: Advice About Lawyering, In-House And Out, That Only The Internet Could Provide (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.
