Put a number on a legal seat. Then live with it.

SB 642 was approved on 8 October 2025. From 1 January 2026, California Labor Code §432.3 tells a company with 15 or more employees that the pay scale in a job posting is a good-faith estimate of what it reasonably expects to pay for the position upon hire. Civil penalties run $100 to $10,000 per violation. Salary history is off the table.

That is the rule this page opens on, because it changes the kind of number a general counsel may write. A career band for “Counsel” is a ladder. Upon hire is day-one cash. The equal-pay amendments travelling with the same bill extend lookback and treat stock and bonuses as wages under Labor Code §1197.5, which is why a California legal-department posting that was sloppy on architecture is now an employment-counsel problem as well as an HR one.

New York is not waiting for California. Labor Law §194-b has required a good-faith minimum and maximum since 17 September 2023 for businesses with four or more employees. The New York State Department of Labor fact sheet P687 (09/23) covers work performed at least in part in New York and remote roles that report to a New York supervisor, office or worksite. Open-ended constructions are not allowed. Benefits do not sit inside the range. The New York City overlay, effective 1 November 2022, is narrower on the definition of salary — base wage, not bonus, equity or benefits — and steeper on subsequent civil penalties, which the City Commission on Human Rights fact sheet of 12 May 2022 puts as high as $250,000. A first complaint may be cured in 30 days. The second is not a teaching moment.

Illinois, from 1 January 2025, adds benefits language that New York 194-b does not require (820 ILCS 112/10(b-25)). Massachusetts General Laws chapter 149, §105F, from 29 October 2025, gives incumbents a right to the range on request and, for EEO-4 filers, a 1 February 2026 copy to the Secretary. Minnesota and Colorado both want a benefits description in the posting. Washington has had a posting duty since 1 January 2023; the 2025 amendment adds a five-business-day cure through 27 July 2027. Washington L&I Administrative Policy ES.E.2, issued 3 December 2025, is blunt about remote postings that could be filled by a Washington-based employee.

The hiring consequence of that Washington stack arrived in the state Supreme Court on 4 September 2025. In Branson v. Washington Fine Wine & Spirits, No. 103394-0, the Court held that a “job applicant” under RCW 49.58.110(4) is a person who applies to a specific posting. The plaintiff need not prove a bona fide intent to take the job. Statutory damages run $100 to $5,000 per violation. A legal-department posting that omits a range is not a quiet careers-page miss. It is a class of people with standing.

Directive (EU) 2023/970 is the other dated floor. Article 5 gives applicants the initial pay or its range, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria, in the vacancy notice, before the interview, or otherwise. Article 5(2) bars a pay-history question. Article 34 required Member States to bring implementing measures into force by 7 June 2026. The European Commission’s equal-pay page restates that deadline, notes that conformity of national legislation will be assessed after it, and records that the Gender Equality Strategy 2026–2030 was adopted on 5 March 2026. Article 9 then starts pay-gap reporting from 7 June 2027 for employers at 250-plus and 150–249 workers. Recital 32 still leaves room to bargain outside the indicated range. It does not give the company its old private opener back.

Italy did not wait. Decreto Legislativo 7 maggio 2026, n. 96, published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale of 1 June 2026, entered into force on 7 June 2026 — the same day as the EU deadline. A U.S. chief legal officer with an Italy-covering employment seat cannot treat that jurisdiction as a draft. The United Kingdom is the contrast, not a copy-paste: the Office for Equality and Opportunity consultation on equal pay and pay discrimination, published 14 July 2026 and updated 4 August 2026, remains open until 17:00 on 27 October 2026. A London legal seat is not yet under an EU-style advert-pay duty. Copying a New York or California protocol onto a UK posting as if it were domestic law is the error.

The posted range is not a negotiation opener. It is the number the general counsel then has to live with. That is the operating change for salary negotiation on a legal seat: the conversation with a shortlisted lawyer happens inside a figure HR, incumbents and the compensation committee can already print.

Across the same New York interview cohort, 186 respondents who had sat as general counsel, chief legal officer, head of legal or CHRO on a legal offer over a 24-month window told Sartori the posted range had become the ceiling the compensation committee would not reopen. One hundred nineteen of those 186 said it in those terms.

A range the compensation committee has not signed is a posting the company cannot defend. That is the script. Everything else — the lockstep year, the equity language, the remote-into-New-York coverage — is a way of making that signature hold.

We have worked the New York in-house market for more than ten years, for listed issuers, sponsor-backed platforms and large private companies putting lawyers on their own payroll. Over the trailing three years we closed 24 in-house searches on that line, with a 93 percent completion rate and a typical timeline of four to seven months. The script below is what those mandates taught, not a candidate playbook.

A chief legal officer at a New York–headquartered public company told us, in that same 24-month window, that once the range was on the careers page the compensation committee “treated it as the budget, not the floor.” That is the working rule. Write the range as the number you will pay a qualified hire on day one. If equity, bonus or a sign-on will do the work that base cannot, say so in the benefits-and-other-compensation language the Illinois, Washington, Minnesota and Colorado postings already require, and keep it out of a New York 194-b salary range that cannot include benefits.

The practical sequence for a head of HR sitting with the general counsel is unromantic. First, name the seat the company is actually buying: staff attorney, associate general counsel, single-lawyer general counsel, or chief legal officer. Second, pick the jurisdiction where the work will be done, including remote-into-New-York and California-residence overlays. Third, put an ACC/Empsight title median, the competing lockstep year if the shortlist is coming from a firm, and a public-employer comparator if the company wants one, on the same page. Fourth, have the compensation committee sign the upon-hire range. Fifth, post. The search runs inside that number. It does not reopen it.

The offer letter is not finished when the range is posted. ABA Model Rule 5.5, Comment [16], is the model safe harbor for a lawyer employed to serve the client organization; Comment [17] is the reminder that a systematic presence can still trigger registration, client-protection assessments and MCLE. New York admitted 196 attorneys as in-house counsel in 2025 under that overlay, second among reporting U.S. jurisdictions in the National Conference of Bar Examiners 2025 count of 1,828. California registered 218; California and Wisconsin in-house counsel practice by registration, not State Bar admission. California Rules of Court rule 9.46, amended effective 1 October 2025, still requires residence, a qualifying institution with a California office, and an application. The State Bar schedule of charges dated March 2026 puts the Registered In-House Counsel application at $2,000. A general counsel hiring a non-California-barred lawyer into a California seat is pricing time and a fee, not just cash.

A head of legal at a PE-backed industrial platform, speaking inside the same New York interview cohort over that 24-month window, said the California posting “killed the career-band we had been recycling for Counsel.” The rewrite took longer than the search. That is the unglamorous script: agree the upon-hire number with HR and the committee before the careers page, then run the search inside it.