Altman Weil’s 2022 Compensation and Roles Survey of COOs and Executive Directors of North American Law Firms (Rel. 1.0) reports on cash compensation and roles of law firm principal administrators. During mid-July, 2022, James Wilber, a principal of Altman Weil Inc., and Rees Morrison, the CEO of Savvy Surveys for Lawyers, launched a no-cost survey of chief operating officers, executive directors, and equivalent roles as the lead administrator in U.S. and Canadian law firms. The 30-page report sent to its 159 respondents provides data on what has happened to COO and executive director compensation since the pandemic hit in mid-March 2020.
“Like in many jobs across industries, including professional ones, the pandemic has had a dramatic impact on compensation,” says Altman Weil survey co-author James Wilber. “Law firms are struggling with determining the level of offers they want to make to COOs and executive directors they want to hire, and qualified candidates are having a difficult time determining what they might be worth in the marketplace. Incumbents want assurance that their pay package is at market. The new survey, focused exclusively on principal administrators of law firms, will help significantly in answering those questions.”
Highlights from the first Release (an update will issue in October) include:
• Total cash compensation: Defined as base salary plus cash bonus, for the 159 law firm COOs and Executive Directors who participated in the survey, average total cash compensation was $418,107, while the range was from $77,000 to $2.7 million.
• Titles versus compensation levels: The three most commonly used titles for law firm principal administrators were COO, Executive Director, and Director of Operations. The median total cash compensation varied significantly by title: $412,500 for COOs, $290,000 for Executive Directors, and $198,000 for Directors of Operation.
• Size of firm and compensation levels: Among other variables, the survey tracks principal administrator compensation by size of the firm as measured by the number of lawyers. In general, the larger the firm the higher the total cash compensation. As an example, 95% of firms that have 400 lawyers would be predicted to pay total cash compensation between approximately $600,000 and $800,000.
• Cost of living and compensation levels: COOs and Executive Directors whose main office was located in a relatively high-cost city earned median total compensation of 24% more than COOs from relatively intermediate cost cities. In turn, those whose main office was located in a relatively intermediate-cost city earned median total compensation 27% more than those of relatively lower-cost cities.
• Other breakdowns: The survey also reports on compensation (base salary, bonus, and total compensation) by many other attributes, including years in role at current firm, number of direct reports, geographic responsibility, person or group to whom the administrator reports, professional certifications, and education . Regarding degrees, for example, 28% have earned an MBA, which corresponds generally to the highest compensation.
“The report’s cutting edge analyses include cross-tabs, smoothed trend lines, confidence intervals, bigram assessments and NLP topic models,” adds survey co-author Rees Morrison. “Moreover, because of the large response we’ve had so far and collaborations underway, we will release an update in mid-October with even more respondents and analyses.” The ongoing survey’s link is https://novisurvey.net/ns/n/COOComp.aspx. The preliminary Table of Contents can be viewed at https://surveyjds.onrender.com/post/2022-07-31-preliminary-results-from-survey-of-law-firm-coos-executive-directors/coosurveypost/.
Conducted in July and August 2022, the Compensation and Roles Survey of COOs and Executive Directors of North American Law Firms (Rel. 1.0) polled principal administrators at several hundred North American law firms. Completed surveys were received from 159, including 25% of respondents who were employed by firms of more than 190 lawyers. The survey will remain open until October 10. Custom reports are available for participants and non-participants.
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