Who Are The 10 Highest-Paid General Counsel? (2021)
A tale of two rankings, based on cash compensation and total compensation.
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Last year was, at least in monetary terms, a very good year for Biglaw. Despite a global pandemic and recession, partners at many large law firms did better than ever.
What about their clients? How did the top lawyers of corporate America, the general counsel and chief legal officers, fare financially in 2020?
The short answer: not as well as their Biglaw brethren, according to Corporate Counsel’s recently released 2021 GC Compensation Survey.
Both mean and median salaries for the #1 lawyers at Fortune 1000 companies were basically flat in 2020 compared to 2019—landing in the mid- to low $500,000s, respectively—and bonuses were down significantly. The mean bonus fell from $644,226 to $504,856, a decline of 21 percent, and the median bonus dropped from $345,302 to $250,000, a dip of 27 percent. (The median bonus is significantly lower than the mean because it’s not skewed by a few big payouts at the top.)
One can understand why some in-house lawyers suffered financially last year. The coronavirus pandemic and associated economic downturn hit certain industries and companies quite hard—especially compared to law firms, which switched to remote work with relative ease. While some sectors and corporations did just fine or even flourished last year, others suffered significantly—and the compensation of their C-suite executives, often tied to corporate performance, suffered as well.
Before we look at some numbers, here’s a quick methodological note. The Corporate Counsel survey focused on the Fortune 1000, the nation’s 1,000 largest companies by revenue, and analyzed their proxy statements, which must disclose the compensation of the CEO, the CFO, and the three other highest-paid executives. So the ranking doesn’t include highly paid lawyers from companies outside the Fortune 1000, nor does it include GCs or CLOs who aren’t named in their corporations’ proxy statements because they aren’t among the most highly paid execs at their organizations.1
With that out of the way, here are the top ten lawyers in the Corporate Counsel ranking of highest-paid GCs and CLOs. The complete chart actually includes 466 companies—which means that at a majority of the Fortune 1000, the leading lawyer isn’t one of the highest-paid executives.
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