In-House Counsel

3 Tips For Negotiating Your In-House Salary

Doing some research before you negotiate can pay dividends.

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In Biglaw, there is no guesswork.

Partners earn more than senior associates. Senior associates earn more than associates. Associates earn more than their paralegals. And thanks to the fine folks at ATL, after a few minutes perusing their pages, you can likely peg your potential starting salary at a given firm within a few thousand bucks.

But in the world of in-house, where no such certainty exists, negotiating a starting salary can feel more like tossing darts at a board than anything resembling science.

Even now, after having spent years working in-house, I admit I am still guilty of wandering the halls of my office wondering how my compensation stacks up against my colleagues, especially my non-legal ones.

The young slacker with the Ivy League MBA — surely HR saw him for the inept kid that he is and compensated appropriately, right?

The haggard veteran of the company who recently was promoted to management — sure, he has been here for two decades, but surely HR has got to value my contributions to the company more than his.

And the hardest worker, the first person in and last person out each day — are her efforts reflected in her compensation as they should be?

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Such burning questions often leave me scheming up a Mission Impossible-style break-in at HR to scour their files, but thus far I have thought the better of it.

With my espionage still in the planning stages, I have yet to discover the keys to mastering the in-house starting salary scientific formula. However, I can relay a few pointers that may come in handy the next time you find yourself starting down the barrel of the “what are your salary expectations” question during the in-house interview process.

First, do your homework. I have hired dozens of legal and non-legal folks alike and have seen well-qualified applicants undervalue their worth more times than I would like to recall. While in-house salary information may not be as readily available as the world of Biglaw, generally you can ballpark what the top brass at a company is making and work backwards.

Thanks to the filing requirements imposed by the SEC, officer compensation is readily available for publicly traded companies, while the IRS tracks the details of the not-for-profits. Spend some time researching as much as you can about about the C-suite and work backwards.

If the C-suite is littered with seven-figure salaries, your six-figure request may not seem too far off the mark. But make the same six-figure request that would put your compensation on par with the company’s top leaders, and you can bet your job prospects with the company will stall.

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Second, once you determine your ask, stand firm, but remain flexible and open to discussion. Like your grade-school arithmetic courses, prove your math. Is it based on your salary history? A competing offer? Knowledge of the market? The more you can prove your salary request is founded in reality, the more likely it is to be accepted.

And if the company comes back to you with a counter that is a little shy of your request, consider swallowing your pride. Often they are not doing this to save a few dollars, but rather because HR has a rubric or scale that is driving the decision. If the few extra dollars will really make the difference for you, then by all means stand firm. But if it is merely a point of pride, consider letting it go.

Finally, once you take the job, trust you are being fairly compensated and do not let your mind run wild with thoughts of what your colleagues earn. While there will always be an occasional outlier, HR generally does a nice job of taking into consideration your JD and work experience as compared to your non-legal colleagues.

Take the time to research and negotiate upfront, but once you accept, trust it was the right offer.

Otherwise you may find yourself looking-up blueprints to the HR office waiting for the right moment to execute your grand heist.

P.S. For a useful resource on pay for corporate counsel, check out ATL’s in-house compensation report.

Stephen R. Williams is in-house counsel with a multi-facility hospital network in the Midwest. His column focuses on a little talked about area of the in-house life, management. You can reach Stephen at stephenwilliamsjd@gmail.com.

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