After years spent billing their lives away at a law firm, a lot of attorneys are eager to make the move to in-house positions.
But what about the money? Could an in-house job possibly be as big of a cash grab as that of the typical Biglaw salary?
While a great number of people believe that in-house lawyers earn less than their Biglaw counterparts, top in-house attorneys, the general counsel of the nation’s largest companies, often earn sums that meet or even exceed Biglaw partner pay. No wonder so many lawyers long to go in-house.
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An easy way to see how much these lawyers make is to take a look at Corporate Counsel’s new rankings of the nation’s best-paid general counsel. We noted the salary survey in Morning Docket. Here’s more information from Corporate Counsel:
[T]hough cash pay for GCs in our survey was nothing to sneeze at, the truth is, equity is still what makes executives the big bucks. And in a trend reminiscent of the dot-com boom years, pay packages are now emphasizing this type of compensation more. “It’s a multiyear trend that’s going on, it’s a pattern that in recent history happens in periods of stable or rising equity markets,” says [Todd Sirras, managing director of Los Angeles-based executive compensation consulting firm Semler Brossy]. “It’s fully in line with what we would expect to see.”
With the overall financial outlook rosier, at least when it comes to corporate earnings, general counsel seem to be more than happy to get paid in stock.
Here’s how general counsel compensation changed since last year’s survey:
- Average base salary: $706,453, up by 0.8 percent.
- Average bonus plus nonequity incentive compensation: $1,388,878, up by 9.2 percent.
- Average stock option award: $860,055, up by 11.8 percent.
- Average stock award: $2,333,716, up by 49.4 percent.
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That huge increase in average stock awards isn’t as exciting as it looks. As explained by Corporate Counsel, “[s]ome of that progress can be attributed to an outlier—David Drummond, general counsel of Google Inc., who received $40 million in stock awards this past year. However, even excluding Drummond, the rise in awards is still an impressive 21.9 percent on average.”
Big stock awards are nice, but remember that they don’t factor into the Corporate Counsel rankings. The magazine ranks GCs by cash compensation (salary plus bonus).
Flip to the next page to see those rankings.