Smaller Raises, Bigger Bonuses

As the pace of pay raises within corporate law departments continued to slow, in-house counsel received average salary increases of 2.6 percent in 2010, down from average raises of as much as 6 percent earlier in the decade. This salary slowdown may become the "new norm" for in-house attorneys as corporations cut costs, according to a survey of more than 6,000 in-house attorneys by legal consultants Hildebrandt Baker Robbins.

But it also appears that variable pay—including cash bonuses, deferred compensation, and stock options—is becoming a bigger part of compensation for law departments. Last year, for example, the median bonus level rose 10.2 percent from 2009. For all in-house attorneys, that translates to average bonus checks of $57,000 (though among chief legal officers, the average bonus was $539,000).

This means that when the ledger is finally tallied, the total compensation for in-house counsel in 2010 averaged $289,000-significantly more than the $174,000 base salary last year and slightly more than the $285,000 total compensation that in-house attorneys earned in 2009.

Source: 2010 Law Department Survey, Hildebrandt Baker Robbin

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