The latest volume in the story of general counsel pay is not a thriller. But it’s not a tear-jerker, either.
Flat. Level. Stagnant. Steady. These are the adjectives that came up in conversations with recruiters familiar with the in-house legal job market. They also are the terms that come to mind in studying the 2010 compensation data, derived from a thorough scouring of Securities and Exchange Commission proxy statements by publicly traded corporations in the Southeast. If the chief legal officer or general counsel happened to be one of the top five highest-paid executives in the company, we have their numbers. Salaries seem fairly level or down a bit from previous years. Stock awards may be up, but their value could be depressed, depending on the damage done by the market slide. The most popular bonus amount in the big companies appears to be zero: Only 26 of the top 200 received bonuses in 2010. For those lower on the list, more bonuses showed up. But still, 88 percent of the group as a whole did not receive bonuses.
