In-house counsel salary data is something we track in our In-House Counsel Salaries Guide, which is soon to be updated with new data aggregated by Ironclad in conjunction with a 2020 effort by Major, Lindsey & Africa. While much of the hub-bub of late has been once again focused on the inexorable rise in first year Biglaw salaries, in-house counsel salary data is often more difficult to find and track over time. One thing is for sure, the demand for lawyers is at one of its highest levels in recent memory, and law firms and companies are fiercely fighting for top legal talent and paying top dollar to fill their roles.
“The United States has more than 1.3 million lawyers, according to a 2020 profile of the legal profession by the American Bar Association. New York City is home to 117,000 of them, or 14 lawyers for every 1,000 residents. The rise of in-house counsel is surmounting, according to The Practice from Harvard Law School. As of 2012, there were only an estimated 100,000 in-house lawyers in the United States, but that number has likely increased as the in-house counsel movement continues to take form. Ironclad compiled the most recently available data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Major, Lindsey & Africa (MLA) to review how in-house counsel salaries compare to lawyer earnings in every state…MLA’s data narrows in on in-house counsels in particular, providing compensation data for 29 states and Washington D.C.”
Read: How In-House Counsel Salaries Stack Up at Ironclad