The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) and Empsight International, LLC, today released the “2023 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 1,963 in-house legal professionals throughout the United States. This self-reported data is used to create the Executive Summary (available to everyone). The Full 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.
There is also company-sourced data representing nearly 18,000 professionals used to create additional benchmarking reports (available for purchase) for over 90 in-house legal positions. Law department leaders and HR can use these to benchmark their entire department.
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 57 percent more in base salary and 160 percent more in total cash compensation compared to GC in companies under $1 billion in revenue.
- Thirty-seven percent of respondents reported changing jobs in the last two years, a four-point increase since 2022.
- Sixteen percent reported working full time in the office, up from 11 percent in 2022.
- While 27 percent reported that compensation was the most important issue related to the job, work-life balance and ability to manage workload were close behind at 26 percent.
- Certain legal specialties, in areas such as securities, healthcare, and banking and finance, tend to have higher compensations across the board.
- CLOs with law firm experience earn 18 percent more in base salary and 20 percent more in total compensation compared to CLOs who do not have prior law firm work experience.
“ACC’s partnership with Empsight, now going into our fourth year, continues to produce a market-leading range of reports that accurately represent compensation data for specific job titles for numerous in-house legal professionals in similarly sized companies, industries, and geographic locations,” said Blake Garcia, Ph.D., ACC’s senior director of business intelligence. “In today’s new working environment, multiple variables continue to impact employment and the decisions employees, and employers, are making. ACC and Empsight’s suite of reports are a valuable tool individuals and department leaders can use to ensure they and their teams are both competitively and fairly compensated for their work.”
“We continue to see healthy increases for in-house counsel compensation following a dynamic year in 2022,” said Jeremy Feinstein, managing director and co-founder, Empsight International. “By publishing three different editions, the ACC Empsight survey reports provide essential tools for in-house professionals in their career planning and development. The company-sourced editions enable human resources professionals and legal executives to benchmark their departments’ compensation against relevant peer companies. We thank ACC for their continued partnership on this project to bring such critical and actionable data to the in-house community.”
The Executive Summary can be viewed here.
About ACC: The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) is the premier global legal association that promotes the common professional and business interests of in-house counsel who work for corporations, associations and other organizations through information, education, networking, and advocacy. For more than 40 years, ACC has set the standard for in-house counsel and raised awareness regarding the value of the chief legal officer in the C-suite and boardroom. With more than 45,000 members employed by over 10,000 organizations and spanning 100+ nations, ACC connects its members to the people and resources necessary for both personal and professional growth. By in-house counsel, for in-house counsel® remains the foundation for ACC’s market leadership. For more information, visit www.acc.com and follow ACC on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
Empsight International, LLC is a human resource consulting firm which helps employers make better decisions about their investment in people. Empsight’s compensation surveys organizations to benchmark their critical functional areas against other relevant peers. Our surveys are seen as definitive data reference sources in markets where such information is critical to maintaining competitiveness. The surveys cover key corporate functional areas, with an emphasis on new and emerging roles. Our survey participation tools are streamlined and designed for ease of use. We rely on input and feedback from our Survey Advisory Group comprised of industry leaders to keep our surveys competitive and on-point. Our Principals and staff have significant experience in consulting on compensation, organizational and human resource issues across multiple industry sectors.