The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) and Empsight International, LLC, today released the “2024 Law Department Compensation Survey,” one of the largest and most comprehensive Safe Harbor Compliant compensation data sets available for in-house legal professionals.
The Law Department Compensation Survey – Self Reported Report is based on responses from 1,887 in-house legal professionals throughout the United States. This self-reported data is used to create the Executive Summary (available to everyone). The Full Self-Reported Survey Report (available for purchase) includes all jobs and covers companies of all revenue sizes enabling individual law department professionals to benchmark their own compensation and career planning.
Some key findings in the Executive Summary using the self-reported data include:
- General counsel in companies with $5 billion or more in revenue make 66 percent more (a 15.8 percent increase from last year’s data) in base salary and 144 percent more in total compensation (a 10 percent decrease compared to last year) compared to GC in companies under $1 billion in revenue. This is driven by higher base salaries and higher short-term and long-term incentives. Larger organizations often offer higher compensation to general counsel due to the increased complexity and scope of the legal issues they face.
- Twenty-five percent of respondents reported changing jobs in the last two years, down from 37 percent in 2023. However, job mobility is expected to increase, with 20 percent of respondents anticipating a job change withing the next year, up from 16 percent in 2023.
- Eighty-five percent of participants say their work arrangement supports their work-life balance either “very well” or “somewhat well”. Those working full-time in the office are least satisfied, while those working fully remote are the most satisfied.
- Certain legal specialties tend to have higher compensation across the board. This year, those practice areas were
- Antitrust
- Securities
- Government relations
- IP and patent litigation
- Licensing.
- In-house counsel with law firm experience earn 19 percent more than their counterparts without prior law firm work experience.
- The average merit increase this year was 3.8 percent (this includes zero percent increases).
“Fair and competitive compensation is critical to individuals and companies alike, and it’s important to get it right,” said Blake Garcia, Ph.D., ACC’s senior director of business intelligence. “In order to do so, accurate, comprehensive data is key and that is exactly what ACC and Empsight’s suite of reports provide. With specific job titles for numerous in-house legal professionals in similarly sized companies, industries, and geographic locations, individuals and law department leaders have everything they need to make informed compensation-related decisions.”
"Accurate and comprehensive compensation data is essential for making informed decisions in today’s competitive in-house law department landscape," said Jeremy Feinstein, Empsight's founder and managing director. "Our collaboration with the ACC on the Law Department Compensation Survey ensures that law department executives and in-house counsel in organizations of all sizes have access to the most reliable benchmarking data available. Whether managing a small team or overseeing a large, complex department, the survey reveals how the size of an organization impacts compensation levels, with larger organizations often offering base and total compensation. This data enables law departments to attract, retain, and reward key talent, no matter the scale of their operations."