Hiring from BigLaw · In-house
The cash, title and clock a general counsel budgets when hiring from BigLaw.
There is no average pay cut. A fourth-year lockstep hire is a Senior Attorney or Associate General Counsel seat with a dated cash step-down. A nonequity origin is not a partner title on a company offer. Budget the term sheet, then the four-to-seven-month clock.
Which seat are you actually buying?
A New York general counsel hiring in house counsel from lockstep BigLaw is buying a title and a cash step-down, not a lifestyle transfer. Across 1,675 structured interviews with New York in-house counsel, the first offer that died, died on the printed title.
NALP’s 2025 U.S. Associate Salary Survey, as of 1 January 2025, put the overall first-year median at $200,000. That is a large-firm office median, not Cravath, and not a company Senior Attorney. Do not underwrite this hire off NALP.
The cash grid is in section 02. The title map is in section 03. The clock is in section 04.
- 28%
- counter-offer incidence on New York in-house searchesorigin-firm counters, not a second interview count
- Sartori quarterly survey since 2019; New York in-house line
- 93%
- of 24 closed New York in-house searches completedtrailing three years, in-house search line
- Sartori mandate telemetry, New York in-house desk
- 145,000
- U.S. in-house lawyers in 2024up from about 78,000 in 2008; residual of BLS lawyers minus firms and government
- ACC, U.S. In-house Counsel Population Statistics, 2025
- 30%
- of chief legal officers planned more lawyer hires in 202550 percent at the largest companies; 41 percent of departments had a cost-cut mandate
- ACC / FTI Consulting Chief Legal Officers Survey, January 2025, n = 772
The cash is title-specific. There is no average pay cut.
Two public series, set side by side, not blended. Lockstep all-in cash is what the origin market printed. ACC title medians are what a company payroll actually pays.
Sartori & Partners has worked the New York in-house market for more than 10 years. The New York coverage figure is about 67,000 lawyers. Over the trailing three years the in-house desk closed 24 searches, with a 93 percent completion rate. They do not invent a third pay survey. The cash a general counsel salary conversation has to survive is the published lockstep grid against the Association of Corporate Counsel title book.
The ABA Journal, on 19 November 2025, reported Cravath’s 2025 lockstep bases: Class of 2025 at $225,000, Class of 2022 at $310,000, Class of 2021 at $365,000, Class of 2019 at $420,000, with Cravath saying those rates would hold in 2026 at announcement. The same item printed year-end plus special bonuses that have sat on the same scale since 2021: $21,000 for the first-year class, $72,500 for the 2022 class, $95,000 for the 2021 class, $130,000 for the 2019 class. Fourth-year all-in cash is therefore $310,000 plus $72,500 = $382,500; fifth-year $365,000 plus $95,000 = $460,000; seventh-year $420,000 plus $130,000 = $550,000. Those are derived totals from the published grid, not a third census.
Milbank moved first on 2 June 2026. Above the Law’s scorecard of 5 June 2026 put the new scale at $235,000 for the 2026/2025 class through $455,000 for the Class of 2018, presumed effective 1 July 2026. Biglaw Investor’s compiled 2026 row, accessed 11 September 2026, puts fourth-year all-in at $410,000 and eighth-year at $585,000. That is the origin market a company is hiring out of. It is not a national median. NALP’s May 2025 press release put the overall first-year median at $200,000 as of 1 January 2025, and at $215,000 inside firms of more than 700 lawyers, with $225,000 the modal figure in 32 percent of offices. Reuters, restating NALP the same day, noted that a 2023 $200,000 figure would have needed to exceed $210,000 to match 5 percent inflation. Use NALP when you are describing the broad large-firm market. Use Cravath and Milbank when you are hiring out of lockstep.
ACC and Empsight’s 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey Executive Summary — questionnaire 6 May to 27 June 2025, data effective 1 March 2025, 1,632 self-reported U.S. in-house professionals, 29 titles — is the destination book. Median total cash: Attorney $160,000; Senior Attorney $228,000; Expert Attorney $260,000; Managing Attorney $283,000; Associate General Counsel $294,000; Deputy General Counsel $368,000; General Counsel – Division/Subsidiary $341,000; General Counsel – Single Lawyer $255,000; General Counsel / Chief Legal Officer $410,000. Median base sits under those totals: Attorney $148,000, Senior Attorney $201,000, Associate General Counsel $245,000, Deputy $280,000, GC/CLO $330,000. STI eligibility runs from 83 percent (Attorney) to 96 percent (Deputy and GC/CLO). Those are survey medians, not a payroll file, and they are the figures a finance committee will recognize.
Put the two series next to each other and the step-down is title-specific. A 2025 fourth-year lockstep cash of $382,500 sits $154,500 above Senior Attorney median total cash of $228,000, and $88,500 above Associate General Counsel median total cash of $294,000. A fifth-year $460,000 sits $166,000 above that AGC median and $92,000 above Deputy median total cash of $368,000. A seventh-year $550,000 sits above GC/CLO median total cash of $410,000 and still inside the GC/CLO 90th-percentile total cash of $764,000. Samples differ: elite lockstep offices versus mixed-revenue in-house respondents. A general counsel cannot budget a slogan pay cut. The term sheet is a title.
Long-term incentive is how a company closes cash without matching an hours-gated bonus. The same ACC summary puts Attorney LTI eligibility at 17 percent and median total target direct at $165,000; Associate General Counsel LTI eligibility at 59 percent and median total target at $338,000; Deputy at 67 percent and $424,000; GC/CLO at 63 percent, with a median LTI target of $134,000 (90th percentile $1.02 million) and median total target direct of $503,000 (90th $1.46 million). CLOs at companies with more than $5 billion in revenue earn 44 percent more base and 173 percent more total target than CLOs at companies under $1 billion; the large-company CLO median total target exceeds $1 million. That is the first in-house rung that can be compared with nonequity origin-market cash. It is still not Am Law PEP.
A general counsel cannot budget a slogan pay cut. The term sheet is a title.
What in house counsel is actually called on the offer.
Lockstep years do not survive as in-house titles. The company prints Attorney, Corporate Counsel, Associate General Counsel, Deputy, General Counsel or Chief Legal Officer. Partner is not on that list.
The class year you are hiring out ofThe title the offer must print
- Attorney / Corporate Counsel Lockstep years 1–3 and the first commercial overflow seat. Bank and technology employers often print Associate Corporate Counsel or Legal Counsel for the same file.
- Senior Attorney / AGC Years 4–6 and most counsel origins. This is the volume product on a company payroll. Printing Counsel against a fifth-year lockstep origin is how the first process dies.
- Deputy / GC / CLO A different seat: reporting line to the chief executive, often company secretary, LTI that can out-cash a nonequity origin. Not a renamed partner.
Across the same New York interview cohort, 61 percent of 218 general counsel, chief legal officers and heads of legal who had hired from lockstep firms over a 24-month window named the printed title — Associate General Counsel versus Counsel — as the first term-sheet item that moved the candidate, not the cash delta. Of those 218 hiring officers, 94 sat at companies under $1 billion in revenue; 71 percent of that 94-person cut said they could not match lockstep all-in cash and had to compete on title, reporting line and LTI instead. A general counsel at a U.S.-listed industrial told us, in that same window, that printing Counsel on a fifth-year lockstep hire “killed the first process before cash was even discussed.” A head of talent at a PE-backed software company said the company could fund a 20 percent STI and a 25 percent LTI target but “would not print a partner title on an in-house offer.”
ACC’s destination taxonomy is the 29-title family in the same March 2025 compensation survey: General Counsel – Single Lawyer; General Counsel / Chief Legal Officer; General Counsel – Division/Subsidiary; Deputy General Counsel; Associate General Counsel; Managing Attorney; Expert Attorney; Senior Attorney; Attorney; Corporate Secretary (not GC); Legal Operations. Origin-market lockstep — associate, counsel, nonequity, equity — does not appear as an in-house title. The 2025 ACC / FTI survey of 772 chief legal officers found 62 percent of highest-ranked legal officers use General Counsel, 25 to 28 percent Chief Legal Officer, (Senior) Vice President in the mid-teens, and Head of Legal about 8 to 9 percent. Seventy-nine percent of those chief legal officers report to the CEO (83 percent in the United States). Half also hold company-secretary duties. That mix is the top-seat brief. It is not the years-4-to-6 commercial hire.
Public employer pages confirm the same split in the labels a requisition can actually use. A U.S.-listed mega-cap technology and retail group lists Corporate Counsel, Senior Corporate Counsel and Associate General Counsel on Amazon.jobs. A globally listed investment bank organizes Legal by desk — Bank Regulatory, Investment Banking Legal, Litigation-Regulatory, Technology Legal — and uses Executive Director for an EMEA capital-markets counsel seat that is not a law-firm partnership grade. A globally listed consumer-staples company publishes Privacy, Competition, Employment, Corporate legal and company secretary, Litigation, Mergers & Acquisition and Intellectual Property as internal desks. Practice labels that ACC says tend to pay more inside the same ladder are securities, antitrust and bankruptcy/creditor; information technology, corporate contracts and entertainment tend to pay less, with gaps shrinking at senior management titles.
Entry-level in-house is not this market. NALP’s Class of 2024 Selected Findings counted 35,335 employed graduates, with business jobs at 7.0 percent (2,474) and in-house the most widely reported business job type at 22.6 percent of those business positions. Firms of 501 or more lawyers took 7,126 jobs. That 501-plus pool is the origin a company later buys from. It is not the destination seat. A company that posts an experienced in-house role for a newly qualified graduate is running a different search than this page.
Credential gates sit on the offer, not on the cash. ABA Model Rule 5.5(d)(1) is the model safe harbor for employer-counsel practice. New York Part 522 lets a U.S.-admitted or foreign-profession lawyer register as in-house without New York residency and, in the Second Department, currently without a fee; they may not appear in a tribunal. California Rule 9.46 requires residence in California and a qualifying institution that employs at least five full-time employees or a California-bar attorney. Where the chief legal officer seat is dual-hatted as secretary of a U.K. public company, a U.S.-only admitted hire does not automatically clear Companies Act 2006 s.273. England and Wales is a large in-house market in its own right: the Law Society Annual Statistics Report 2023, published 23 January 2025, counted 35,738 in-house solicitors as of July 2023, 22 percent of certificate holders, up from 19 percent in 2014. Name the gate in the requisition. Do not discover it in week six.
| Origin | Origin cash | Print this title | Destination median total cash | Incentive shape |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lockstep years 1–3 | 2025 bases $225,000–$260,000 | Attorney, Associate Corporate Counsel, Legal Counsel | $160,000 median total cash | 17% LTI eligible |
| Lockstep years 4–6 | $382,500 (4th) / $460,000 (5th) all-in | Senior Attorney, Corporate Counsel, Associate General Counsel | $228,000 / $294,000 median total cash | 20% STI target (SA); 59% LTI (AGC) |
| Counsel / nonequity origin | No lockstep print — do not use PEP | Associate General Counsel, Legal Director, bank Executive Director (legal) | $294,000 (AGC) / $368,000 (Deputy) median total cash | 59–67% LTI eligible |
| Group GC / Chief Legal Officer | Not a lockstep comparable | General Counsel or Chief Legal Officer | $410,000 median total cash; $503,000 median total target | 63% LTI eligible; median LTI target $134,000 |
Budget four to seven months. The 16-day clock is the offer, not the search.
Time-to-fill is a company operations number. Counter-offers are an origin-firm number. Neither is a candidate lifestyle story.
We have worked in the New York in-house market for more than 10 years, for general counsel, chief legal officers and heads of legal filling commercial, Associate General Counsel and group seats. Over the last three years we closed 24 in-house searches with a 93 percent completion rate and a typical timeline of 4 to 7 months. Sartori’s quarterly survey since 2019 finds counter-offer incidence on those New York in-house processes at 28 percent, with a median of 16 working days from offer to acceptance once the term sheet is real.
Of 24 closed New York in-house searches over three years, 11 were Senior Attorney or Associate General Counsel seats filled from lockstep years 4 to 6; 5 were Deputy General Counsel or General Counsel seats; 5 were specialist seats (privacy and AI, investigations, trade and customs); 3 were Attorney or developing-counsel seats. Six of the 24 ran past seven months. In 4 of those 6, the first requisition printed Counsel against a fifth- or sixth-year lockstep origin whose all-in cash the company would not match. Those files completed on a second process with a corrected title. That is slow placement. It is also the uncomfortable number on this desk: title error is the delay we see, and we do not always catch it before the first process dies.
ACC’s own mobility texture, from the same March 2025 compensation survey, is not a hiring conclusion and should not be read as one. Twenty-eight percent of respondents changed jobs in the past two years; 17 percent said they were likely to change in the coming year; 17 percent received a promotion in the past year, and 13 percent of those promoted received a base increase of more than 20 percent. Those not promoted received a mean merit increase of 3.5 percent. A company that prices a BigLaw hire as if the internal bench will wait on a 3.5 percent merit cycle is underwriting hope. The 28 percent counter-offer rate on our New York in-house line is the origin firm doing the same maths from the other side of the table.
Median offer to acceptance
Working days, New York in-house line, once the term sheet is real. This is not the search clock.
Sartori mandate telemetry, New York in-house deskDo not treat profits per equity partner as an offer number for a company seat.
The hire is a budget choice against $1,000-an-hour overflow, or a specialist against a live statute.
A general counsel does not hire from BigLaw because a candidate wants fewer hours. The department is absorbing rate inflation, matter volume, and a stack of instruments that still have dates.
A filing duty that has endedA statute that still has a date
- Removed load U.S. beneficial-ownership reporting for domestic companies has ended. The 2024 federal climate-disclosure rule is stayed and undefended. Do not staff those seats.
- Rate shock Am Law 100 standard rates through $1,000, worked rates up 7.3 percent, 86 percent of legal spend still at firms. Commercial overflow is the insource candidate.
- Live instrument Item 1.05, EU AI Act prohibitions and GPAI duties, UK failure-to-prevent-fraud, NIS2, NYDFS Part 500. Specialist Associate General Counsel, not a junior filer.
Thomson Reuters Institute and Georgetown Law’s 2026 Report on the State of the US Legal Market, dated 7 January 2026, put 2025 worked-rate growth at 7.3 percent and recorded Am Law 100 standard rates cracking $1,000, against around $600 in other segments. Demand averaged 2.5 percent, as high as 4.4 percent in July. Ninety percent of legal dollars still ran hourly on Legal Tracker. Talent costs at firms rose 8.2 percent; technology spending rose nearly 10 percent. Average firm profit grew 13.0 percent. That is the overflow a general counsel is buying against. The same report notes that corporate legal departments have led firms in generative-AI use since 2022, and that nearly 90 percent of general counsel report resource limits blocking strategic impact. Commercial contracts, employment and mid-complexity work is what insourcing can actually take. Bet-the-company M&A, litigation and investigations stay a panel-plus-in-house hybrid.
The Thomson Reuters 2025 Legal Department Operations Index — survey July 2025, 128 U.S. legal-department respondents, Legal Tracker analytics from more than 1,500 corporate law departments — is the buyer-side squeeze. Fifty-six percent report the department is under-resourced; 46 percent expect to bring more work in-house; 55 percent report flat or decreasing legal-department budgets; 81 percent report increasing matter volumes. Traditional law firms were 86 percent of total legal spend in 2024. Forty-five percent of operations leaders are “General Counsel tasked to run legal operations.” The ACC / FTI 2025 chief legal officer survey found 30 percent of 772 respondents planned to increase lawyer hires that year, 50 percent at the largest companies, while 41 percent of departments had received a cost-cutting mandate. Forty-three percent planned to send more work to law firms, citing the global regulatory landscape. That is not a freeze on BigLaw-origin Associate General Counsel seats. It is a selective add against a flat budget.
The ACC BLS-residual series puts U.S. in-house lawyers at about 145,000 in 2024, up from about 78,000 in 2008. New York held about 23,200 of them in 2024. The ABA Journal, on 9 December 2025, reporting the 2025 National Lawyer Population Survey, put the U.S. lawyer stock at 1.37 million. ACC membership is not a census: nearly 50,000 members at more than 12,000 organizations in more than 100 countries. The destination employer is a corporation, a nonprofit, an association, a wholly-owned subsidiary, or — for one in three ACC CLO respondents — a company owned by or transacting with private equity. Among those PE-touching departments, 90 percent handle PE contract review and 81 percent other risk due diligence. Public-company chief legal officers more often attend board meetings (73 percent versus 61 percent private) and report integral involvement in M&A (69 percent versus 57 percent).
On the load side, the dates are specific. Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, the EU AI Act, entered into force on 1 August 2024; Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, the Digital Omnibus on AI dated 8 July 2026, kept prohibited-practice duties from 2 February 2025 and moved Annex III high-risk obligations to 2 December 2027. GPAI Chapter V duties that applied from 2 August 2025 were not deferred. Privacy and AI counsel at deployers stays live through 2025 and 2026; Annex III conformity-assessment counsel can be timed into 2027. SEC Form 8-K Item 1.05, adopted 26 July 2023, still requires a public-company filing generally four business days after a materiality determination. The U.K. failure-to-prevent-fraud offence under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 has been in force since 1 September 2025 for large organizations (at least two of more than 250 employees, more than £36 million turnover, more than £18 million total assets). NIS2 has applied since 18 October 2024. NYDFS Part 500’s second-amendment MFA and asset-inventory duties ran from 1 November 2025 for covered financial-services entities. The Department of Justice Criminal Division Corporate Enforcement Policy, updated 12 May 2025, starts a 120-day clock when a whistleblower reports inside and then to the Department.
M&A loads the corporate desk in mega-deals, not as a mid-market volume spike. Bain’s 27 January 2026 lookback put calendar 2025 global M&A at $4.9 trillion, up 40 percent, with 80 percent of 300 surveyed M&A executives expecting to sustain or increase 2026 activity. LSEG, on 12 August 2026, put announced M&A for January through July 2026 at $3.19 trillion, up 36 percent, on more than 28,000 transactions, down 10 percent, with 48 mega-deals above $10 billion accounting for about 40 percent of value. The FTC and DOJ FY2025 Hart-Scott-Rodino report, issued 2 July 2026, counted 2,006 notified transactions, about 31.8 percent valued above $1 billion, and 18 merger enforcement actions — not a 2021-style spike (FY2021 reported 3,520). FTC Chairman Ferguson’s 18 February 2025 memorandum kept the 2023 Merger Guidelines in force. The expanded HSR form that took effect 10 February 2025 was vacated; from 19 March 2026 filers may use the pre-2025 form. The filing-form load lightened. The Guidelines and the reportable-deal flow did not.
Trade is the reshape, not a zero. Executive Order 14257, 2 April 2025, imposed reciprocal tariffs. Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, decided 20 February 2026, held that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. Thomson Reuters / Georgetown attributed part of 2025 demand to tariffs and trade wars. The holding shifts work toward refund, unwinding, other statutory tariff programs and contract-repricing. It does not retire the trade desk at an import-heavy industrial. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 28 June 2024, and SEC v. Jarkesy, 27 June 2024, are the public-law floor under every U.S. agency file a general counsel inherits: no Chevron deference, and SEC civil-penalty fraud in Article III. Those are Deputy-level public-law seats, not a years-1-to-3 commercial hire.
Print the company title. Price the ACC band. Then run the clock.
Two buying problems share a BigLaw origin and almost no other term. A years-4-to-6 commercial hire is a title-and-LTI problem. A group chief legal officer hire is a reporting-line and incentive problem.
Sartori maps lawyers globally at a canonical scale of nearly 1.5 million profiles, with quarterly market surveys running since 2019. What this page can see, and what it cannot, should be named. We can price the cash step-down from a published lockstep grid against ACC title medians. We cannot see realized vest on the LTI target a chief legal officer will actually receive. A company that treats the $134,000 median LTI target as cash in year one is doing the same thing as a board that treats PEP as a paycheck. Our in-house counsel recruiting desk runs the search; the term sheet still belongs to the general counsel and the head of HR.
Three anonymized composites from the 24-search envelope show the pattern without dressing it up. They are Sartori engagements, described by category only.
PE-backed healthcare platform, Senior Attorney
Year-five lockstep origin. The first requisition printed Counsel. The candidate refused before cash was discussed. Second process, five months, Associate General Counsel on the offer, base inside the ACC AGC band plus 20 percent STI. One of 11 year-4-to-6 seats among 24 closed New York in-house searches.
Listed industrial, trade and customs AGC
Opened after the April 2025 reciprocal-tariff program. Six months to signature. The February 2026 IEEPA holding did not cancel the seat; it reshaped it toward contract-repricing and other statutory tariff programs. Specialist desk, not a lifestyle transfer.
Public-company GC search that stalled on PEP
The board compared the seat to Am Law 100 average PEP. The first shortlist walked. Restarted against ACC GC/CLO total-target figures. This is the slow file: we do not pretend every New York in-house search lands inside seven months.
For the years-4-to-6 hire, the company is buying a commercial or specialist file, not a partner.
- Print Associate General Counsel or Senior Attorney on the offer. Counsel against a fifth-year lockstep origin is the delay we keep seeing.
- Price into the ACC band and close the gap with STI and LTI. Do not copy a 2,000-hour bonus floor the department cannot bill.
- Name the live statute if this is a specialist seat: Item 1.05, AI Act prohibitions, failure-to-prevent-fraud, NIS2, Part 500, trade after IEEPA. Leaving BigLaw is not the brief; the instrument is.
- Run Part 522 or Rule 9.46 before the start date, not after. Tribunal work still needs a local admission.
For the group seat, the comparable is ACC total target, the Cosec gate, and the CEO line — not PEP.
- Score reporting line first. Seventy-nine percent of ACC chief legal officers report to the CEO. A finance-line seat is a different job.
- Price total target, not base. $503,000 median total target direct; above $1 million at $5 billion-plus revenue. Base of $330,000 is not the package.
- Test the secretary overlay where the seat is dual-hatted. Half of ACC chief legal officers carry those duties; s.273 is live for a U.K. public company.
- Do not hire this seat from lockstep years 4–6. The role-change briefing is the adjacent read; this page only sets the cash and the title.
| Gate | Where it binds | What it allows | What it still blocks |
|---|---|---|---|
| ABA Model Rule 5.5(d)(1) | Model rule (U.S. states vary) | Employer-counsel practice by a lawyer admitted in another U.S. or foreign jurisdiction | Not services that require pro hac vice |
| 22 NYCRR Part 522 | New York | Full-time or part-time in-house for a non-law-practice entity; no New York residency; U.S. or foreign good standing | No tribunal appearances; failure to register is professional misconduct under § 522.7 |
| California Rule 9.46 | California | Registered in-house counsel at a qualifying institution with a California office | Must reside in California; annual registration; new registration on change of employer; no California state-court appearances |
| Companies Act 2006 s.273 | U.K. public companies | A U.K. solicitor clears the secretary qualification; directors must take reasonable steps on knowledge and experience | A U.S.-only admitted hire does not clear s.273(2)(c) without CGI membership or the directors' residual judgment |
Questions general counsel ask before they open a BigLaw-origin search
What cash should a general counsel budget when hiring in house counsel from BigLaw?
Budget a title-specific step-down, not a slogan cut: 2025 fourth-year lockstep cash of $382,500 against ACC Senior Attorney median total cash of $228,000 as of 1 March 2025. The Association of Corporate Counsel / Empsight survey of 1,632 U.S. in-house professionals prices Associate General Counsel median total cash at $294,000 and Deputy General Counsel at $368,000. A public-company chief legal officer package can out-cash a nonequity origin on total target — ACC puts GC/CLO median total target direct at $503,000, and CLOs at companies above $5 billion above $1 million — but that is a different seat. Our private-practice versus in-house salary guide is the geography comparison; this page is the term sheet.
What in-house title maps a fourth-to-sixth-year lockstep associate?
Print Senior Attorney, Corporate Counsel or Associate General Counsel — never partner. ACC’s 29-title ladder, effective 1 March 2025, is the destination taxonomy; lockstep years 4–6 sit on the Senior Attorney ($228,000 median total cash) and Associate General Counsel ($294,000) rungs. Bank and technology employers often print Vice President, Executive Director or Corporate Counsel for the same file. A globally listed investment bank’s 2026 legal careers page states that experienced hires generally come from private practice, not from law school. Our in-house versus law-firm comparison covers the work-shape trade; this page is the name on the offer.
How long does a BigLaw-to-in-house search take for a company?
Budget 4 to 7 months on Sartori’s New York in-house desk, and 16 working days from offer to acceptance once the term sheet is real. That is the search clock, not the regulatory clock. A public-company cyber disclosure still runs on the SEC’s four-business-day Item 1.05 timer, adopted 26 July 2023. Counter-offers from the origin firm hit 28 percent of New York in-house processes on Sartori’s quarterly survey running since 2019. See our counter-offer briefing for how companies hold a signed offer.
Should we match the lockstep bonus, or buy long-term incentive instead?
Match base into the ACC title band; buy STI and LTI rather than a 2,000-hour bonus. ACC’s March 2025 survey puts Attorney STI target at 15 percent and LTI eligibility at 17 percent; Associate General Counsel STI target 25 percent and LTI eligibility 59 percent; GC/CLO STI target 35 percent, LTI eligibility 63 percent, median LTI target $134,000. Above the Law’s June 2026 matching table listed 2,000-hour bonus floors at several firms that followed the Milbank scale. In-house cash is not billed. Do not copy the hours gate onto a company offer.
Can we hire a BigLaw lawyer who is not admitted in our state?
Yes, if the state’s in-house registration is available and the work is for the employer. ABA Model Rule 5.5(d)(1), as published in 2019, is the model safe harbor for employer-counsel practice by a lawyer admitted elsewhere. New York’s 22 NYCRR Part 522 (amendments effective 15 April 2020) has no residency requirement and, in the Second Department, currently no registration fee; registered in-house counsel may not appear in a tribunal. California Rule 9.46 (amended 1 October 2025) requires California residence, annual registration, and a qualifying institution with a California office. If the seat also carries public-company secretary duties in the United Kingdom, Companies Act 2006 s.273 is a separate gate.
When does a chief legal officer package out-cash a BigLaw origin?
At the group GC/CLO seat of a large-revenue company, on total target, not on base. ACC and Empsight, data effective 1 March 2025, put GC/CLO median total cash at $410,000 and median total target direct at $503,000, with the 90th percentile of total target at $1.46 million; CLOs at companies above $5 billion in revenue earn 44 percent more base and 173 percent more total target than CLOs under $1 billion, and that large-company median total target exceeds $1 million. Am Law 100 average profits per equity partner of $3.59 million, published 14 April 2026, is firm profit divided by equity owners. It is not a company offer number. Our succession scorecard is the adjacent brief for the top seat.
Lockstep grids, ACC title cash, and the clocks on this hire.
Lockstep bases and bonuses come from Cravath via the ABA Journal and the 2026 Milbank reset via Above the Law. Destination cash is ACC / Empsight. Clocks are Sartori's New York in-house line and the dated instruments in the Sources list.
Sources and further reading
44 references- Sartori & Partners — New York Legal Talent Research Programme (1,675 structured interviews; ~67,000 lawyers mapped; quarterly surveys since 2019; mandate telemetry) sartoriglobal.com ↗
- ABA Journal — Cravath kicks off associate bonus season and other firms follow (19 November 2025) abajournal.com ↗
- Above the Law — Associate Compensation Scorecard: The 2026 Summer Of Salary Increases (5 June 2026) abovethelaw.com ↗
- Biglaw Investor — Biglaw Salary Scale + Bonuses (1968–2026) biglawinvestor.com ↗
- NALP — 2025 U.S. Associate Salary Survey press release (28 May 2025) nalp.org ↗
- Reuters — Starting law firm associate pay has been flat since 2023, NALP reports (28 May 2025) reuters.com ↗
- ACC / Empsight — 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey Executive Summary acc.com ↗
- ACC — U.S. In-house Counsel Population Statistics (2025) acc.com ↗
- ABA Journal — Number of US lawyers increases for first time since 2020 (9 December 2025) abajournal.com ↗
- ACC — 2025 Chief Legal Officers Survey Key Findings (28 January 2025) acc.com ↗
- FTI Consulting — ACC and FTI release the annual Chief Legal Officers Survey (28 January 2025) fticonsulting.com ↗
- ACC / FTI — 2025 Chief Legal Officers Survey (full report PDF) static2.ftitechnology.com ↗
- Thomson Reuters Institute — 2025 Legal Department Operations Index (September 2025) thomsonreuters.com ↗
- Thomson Reuters Institute / Georgetown Law — 2026 Report on the State of the US Legal Market (7 January 2026) thomsonreuters.com ↗
- Reuters — Are law firms headed for a downturn? Billing rates may hold the key (7 January 2026) reuters.com ↗
- Thomson Reuters Institute — 2025 State of the Corporate Law Department Report (25 March 2025) thomsonreuters.com ↗
- Above the Law — The 2026 Am Law 100 Is Out, And Surprise: The Rich Law Firms Got Richer (15 April 2026) abovethelaw.com ↗
- The American Lawyer — The 2026 Am Law 100: Ranked by Profits Per Equity Partner (14 April 2026) law.com ↗
- Bain & Company — Global M&A poised to sustain momentum in 2026 (27 January 2026) bain.com ↗
- LSEG Deals Intelligence — Global M&A update (12 August 2026) lseg.com ↗
- NALP — Employment for the Class of 2024 Selected Findings nalp.org ↗
- Unilever — Legal careers careers.unilever.com ↗
- Goldman Sachs — Careers in Legal goldmansachs.com ↗
- Amazon.jobs — Legal job category amazon.jobs ↗
- ABA Model Rule 5.5 — Unauthorized Practice of Law; Multijurisdictional Practice of Law americanbar.org ↗
- N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. Tit. 22 § 522.1 law.cornell.edu ↗
- N.Y. Appellate Division, Second Department — In-house Counsel Registration nycourts.gov ↗
- California Rules of Court — Rule 9.46. Registered in-house counsel courts.ca.gov ↗
- State Bar of California — Registered In-House Counsel calbar.ca.gov ↗
- Companies Act 2006 s.273 legislation.gov.uk ↗
- Law Society of England and Wales — Annual statistics report 2023 (23 January 2025) lawsociety.org.uk ↗
- SRA — In-house solicitors thematic review (14 March 2023) sra.org.uk ↗
- Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 — Digital Omnibus on AI (OJ, 24 July 2026) eur-lex.europa.eu ↗
- SEC — Cybersecurity Risk Management, Strategy, Governance, and Incident Disclosure (Release 2023-139, 26 July 2023) sec.gov ↗
- SEC — Votes to End Defense of Climate Disclosure Rules (27 March 2025) sec.gov ↗
- GOV.UK — New measures to tackle fraud come into effect (1 September 2025) gov.uk ↗
- FTC / DOJ — Fiscal Year 2025 Hart-Scott-Rodino Annual Report (2 July 2026) ftc.gov ↗
- FTC — Premerger Notification Program ftc.gov ↗
- FTC Chairman memorandum — Merger Guidelines (18 February 2025) ftc.gov ↗
- Supreme Court — Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (20 February 2026) supremecourt.gov ↗
- FinCEN — Permanently Ends Beneficial Ownership Reporting Requirements (11 August 2026) fincen.gov ↗
- Directive (EU) 2022/2555 — NIS 2 Directive eur-lex.europa.eu ↗
- NYDFS — 23 NYCRR 500 second amendment (1 November 2023) dfs.ny.gov ↗
- DOJ Criminal Division — Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy (12 May 2025) justice.gov ↗
Lockstep all-in totals on this page are arithmetic from published Cravath bases and bonuses (ABA Journal, 19 November 2025), not a third survey. ACC figures are self-reported medians, data effective 1 March 2025, 1,632 U.S. respondents. NALP first-year medians describe a broader large-firm sample as of 1 January 2025 and are not blended with the lockstep print. Am Law PEP is an equity-owner average and is not used as a company offer comparable. Employer career pages are named only in landscape; engagement narratives are anonymized composites inside the 24-search envelope.
Set the term sheet. Then read the role.
This page is the dated BigLaw-to-in-house file: clock, cash, titles. The siblings cover the work-shape trade, the GC identity shift, and the succession scorecard.
From Law Firm to General Counsel: What Really Changes
The role shift this term sheet sits under — scope, reporting line and the identity change. Not the cash grid.
Read the role shiftIn-House vs Law Firm
The work-shape comparison: who owns the decision, who bills the hour, and what a company is actually buying.
Read the comparisonWhat Companies Look For in a New General Counsel
The succession scorecard for the top seat — perimeter, reporting line, Cosec — once the cash band is set.
Read the scorecardFor general counsel and heads of HR
Hiring from BigLaw and unsure the title and cash will hold?
We work the in-house market as a technical search desk: the title first, the ACC band second, the origin lockstep last. Quiet, evidence-led, and as willing to tell you the first requisition will fail as to run the search.