Survey shows modest pay gains for attorneys in corp. law departments

Attorneys working in corporate law departments earned slightly more salary this year, although bonuses continue to decline across the board, according to ALM Legal Intelligence's 2013 Law Department Compensation Benchmarking Survey. This year's survey reported modest gains in Salary and Total Cash Compensation for seven of the nine positions surveyed at in-house legal departments in the U.S. The most senior positions - Chief Legal Officers/General Counsel (CLO/GC) - experienced an increase in median total cash compensation to $603,400, up 11% from 2012. The number-two position - Deputy CLO - realized an increase in median total cash compensation to $372,500, up 5% from a year ago. All other positions reported slight compensation gains, except for the junior level positions of attorney and staff attorney (both down 6%). However, the pay increases this year were all due to raises in salary, as median bonuses were down this year in every position that was surveyed. For instance, while CLOs/GCs saw their salaries climb, their median bonuses declined more than 16% this year. Likewise, median bonuses slipped for Deputy CLOs by more than 10% over 2012. The biggest dips were among senior attorneys (down 39%) and attorneys (down 98%). The report is available now at http://almlegalintel.com/Surveys/LDCBS. "This year, we also broke out compensation data by gender for the nine positions in our survey," said Kevin Iredell, vice president of ALM Legal Intelligence. "We found that for the top level managers in law departments, the disparity in compensation among men and women was the highest, particularly in bonuses, which were about 40% lower for women. But at the managing attorney level down to non-management positions, we saw less of a disparity, with median salary, bonus and total compensation figures for women just about par for that of men. In two cases, Senior Attorney and Attorney, female attorneys were compensated at a 7-10% higher rate than their male counterparts." ALM Legal Intelligence offers detailed business information for and about the legal industry, focused on the top U.S. and international law firms. The division's online research Web service, www.almlegalintel.com, provides subscribers with direct, on-demand access to ALM Legal Intelligence's database of surveys, rankings and lists related to law firms and the legal industry. ALM Legal Intelligence is a division of ALM. Published: Mon, Aug 26, 2013