Guide · In-house hiring
Guarantee versus the book the firm can actually underwrite.
A hiring committee that closes on published profits per equity partner has not underwritten the seat. The 2026 question for a general counsel is whether the book survives conflicts, the rate card, and the company's own payables.
The floor is a claim on the company until the book is real.
A general counsel asked to keep paying through a multi-year floor is already inside a partner compensation conversation. Sartori maps about 67,000 lawyers in New York. The question is whether the book survives your conflicts and rate card — not whether published profits per equity partner look like a salary.
The company is the economic buyer. If the names on the pitch already sit on the general counsel's panel, the floor is a prepaid invoice for work you already own. Haircut or do not close.
The conversation closes on the book, not the announcement. The underwrite checklist is in section 04.
- $3.59M
- Am Law 100 average PEP, 2025 performanceFirm net income divided by equity owners — not a salary, not a guarantee
- David Lat recap of ALM tables, 30 April 2026
- $341k
- GC / CLO median total cash1,632 U.S. in-house respondents; cash effective 1 March 2025
- ACC / Empsight Law Department Compensation Survey, 2025
- 2,006
- U.S. HSR filings, FY202531.8% of notified deals valued over $1 billion — filing count, not deal-dollar headlines
- FTC / DOJ 48th HSR Annual Report, 2 July 2026
- 43%
- of CLOs planned more work to firms in 2025Up 17 points year on year; the company as buyer of hours
- ACC 2025 Chief Legal Officers Survey
Three instruments. One conversation. Do not collapse them.
The Am Law 100, the in-house ladder, and a small nonequity flash sample are three instruments. A general counsel who collapses them into one 'market number' will overpay the floor and mis-price the hire onto payroll.
David Lat’s 30 April 2026 recap of the 2026 Am Law 100 tables put average profits per equity partner at $3.59 million on 2025 performance, on $178.95 billion of gross revenue (up 13.0 percent) and revenue per lawyer of $1.39 million (up 8.7 percent). The American Lawyer’s own PEP ranking, published 14 April 2026, stated PEP up 14.0 percent for the Am Law 100 as a whole. That is firm net income divided by the count of equity owners. Published PEP is a firm average. It is not the price of the seat the company is buying, and it is not what a chief legal officer should write into an offer.
The companion ALM table the same day reported Average Compensation–All Partners up 11.6 percent in 2025. ALM defines CAP as net income plus fixed-income compensation paid to the nonequity tier, divided by equity plus nonequity headcount. The public teaser did not carry a dollar-level cohort CAP. The spread between PEP growth and CAP growth is the mechanism a head of legal needs: the equity tier captured more of the lift than the blended owner pool.
Headcount mix is the same story in a different unit. Lat’s recap of the ALM census put Am Law 100 attorney headcount at 128,868, up about 4 percent in 2025 after 7.7 percent growth in 2024; nonequity ranks increased by almost 7 percent; equity ranks grew about 2 percent. Bloomberg Law, on 10 June 2026, reading its own firm questionnaire, found equity shareholder counts “stayed roughly flat” while the nonequity tally grew 5 percent. A general counsel buying a titled “owner” is often buying a salaried tier that lifts PEP by not diluting it.
Above the Law’s 15 April 2026 recap of the same ranking is useful only as a reminder that the average is not the tail. Wachtell PEP printed at $12.152 million; Kirkland & Ellis at $11.121 million; seventy firms had PEP growth of at least 10 percent; two firms reported PEP declines. Those are firm-level averages from ALM, not rainmaker packages a chief legal officer can underwrite. Bloomberg Law, on 10 June 2026, quoted a law-firm adviser who said he had helped set compensation this year at more than $40 million, at the “extreme” end, and declined to name the firm. That is anecdote. It is not a band.
The company’s own payroll sits on a different scale. The Association of Corporate Counsel and Empsight 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey, cash effective 1 March 2025 and published 16 September 2025, put median total cash for a general counsel / chief legal officer at the figure in the grid above, on a median base of $279,000. Associate general counsel median total cash printed at $294,000. CLOs at companies with revenue greater than $5 billion make 44 percent more in base and 173 percent more in total target compensation than CLOs at organizations under $1 billion. The rest of the in-house ladder sits on the scale below. That is still not PEP.
The derived read a hiring committee can actually use: the published Am Law 100 average sits more than ten times the median total cash ACC recorded for a general counsel / chief legal officer. A head of legal who is asked to keep paying mega-firm invoices, or to hire the same person onto the payroll, is looking at two prices for one biography. Equity partner salary talk that opens on PEP has already left the company’s books.
Attorney median total cash
ACC / Empsight 2025; cash effective 1 March 2025. The first in-house rung, not a firm draw.
ACC 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey| Instrument | What it measures | 2025 / 26 print | What a general counsel can use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Am Law 100 PEP | Firm net income / equity owners | 2025 performance year; ranking published 14 April 2026 | Direction of owner profit — never an offer letter |
| Am Law 100 CAP | Equity payouts + nonequity fixed income, / all owners | 89 of 100 firms increased; no public dollar average on the fetched teaser | Whether the blended owner pool shared the lift |
| ACC GC / CLO total cash | Self-reported in-house cash, 1,632 U.S. respondents | Self-reported company cash, effective 1 March 2025 | The company’s own payroll when the hire comes inside |
| ALM nonequity flash | Self-reported base and bonus, n ≈ 56 nonequity lawyers | Average base ~$345,679; bonus a little more than $106,000 | Context only — a small mixed-size sample, not an Am Law 100 nonequity mean |
The nonequity flash, quoted by Above the Law on 16 January 2025 from a Law.com ALM survey, covered 286 lawyers total, about 56 of them nonequity, across firms from 1–99 lawyers to 1,500+. Medians printed at $300,000 salary and $50,000 bonus. Flag the sample. It is not 2025 full-year ALM census. It is useful to a head of legal only as a reminder that nonequity cash can sit near the top of the 2026 associate grid Biglaw Investor publishes: first-year base $235,000 through eighth-year $455,000, with listed year-end bonuses $20,000–$115,000 by class. A chief legal officer hiring a nonequity lawyer in-house is not matching PEP. They are often matching a salaried band that already looks like senior-associate total cash.
Cravath’s move off strict seniority lockstep, reported by Reuters on 6 December 2021, with Davis Polk already there in 2020, is the architecture underneath those averages. Once a lockstep firm can pay off-grid, the buyer of that firm’s advice is funding a wider internal pay spread. The 2021 PEP print is not a 2026 band. The structure is. A general counsel on that panel is buying discretion, not a class-year schedule.
Published PEP is a firm average. It is not the price of the seat the company is buying.
The person who pays the invoice is usually a general counsel, not a hiring committee at the firm.
Two desks share one biography: the firm that wants to write a floor, and the in-house office that will either keep paying the hours or hire the person onto the payroll. ACC's 2025 CLO survey is the map of the second desk.
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s 2025 Chief Legal Officers Survey covered 772 chief legal officers across 20 industries and 48 countries. Title of the highest-ranking lawyer: general counsel 60 percent, chief legal officer 25 percent (CLO more common as companies grow). In the United States, general counsel is still 71 percent. Reporting: 79 percent of CLOs report directly to the CEO (83 percent in the United States). Of those who do not: CFO 44 percent, COO 17 percent, parent-company CLO 8 percent. Separate reporting line to the board: 54 percent. 70 percent of CLOs oversee at least two additional areas — risk, compliance, privacy, ethics. That is the person a floor has to survive.
The same survey is the dual-buyer split. Understaffing was the top departmental barrier (29–30 percent). 30 percent of chief legal officers planned to increase lawyer headcount in 2025; Legal Dive, on 29 January 2025, restated ACC’s cut that half of CLOs in companies with $1 billion-plus revenue planned more lawyer hires versus about a third in smaller companies. The same ACC survey found 43 percent of chief legal officers planned to increase volume outsourced to law firms — up 17 points year on year, the highest since 2019. Cost-cutting mandates hit 41 percent of departments, 63 percent at $20 billion-plus revenue. A head of legal on a flat budget is not a captive buyer of $1,000 hours.
Thomson Reuters Institute, with Georgetown Law, in the 7 January 2026 State of the US Legal Market, put Legal Tracker dollars at 90 percent still on hourly arrangements, and average Am Law 100 lawyer standard rates cracking the $1,000 barrier in 2025 against about $600 elsewhere. Nearly 90 percent of general counsel in that report said resource limits block the strategic impact their organizations expect. Direct lawyer-compensation spend at firms rose 8.2 percent. The company’s legal budget is the constraint on what any floor can collect. A guarantee that assumes the in-house office will keep paying mega-firm rates for work that can move is not underwritten by this report.
When the company is the economic buyer of the floor, the diligence is the invoice.
- Name the panel conflict. If the portable clients already sit with the general counsel, the firm is pricing work the company already owns.
- Read the rate card against $1,000 hours. Thomson Reuters split mega-firm standard rates from the rest of the market. A head of legal can move the file.
- Ask who funds 134-day collections. Citi’s 2024 cycle is the company’s payables. A floor is working capital, not a courtesy.
- Do not confuse deal dollars with filings. LSEG’s 2025 announced M&A is not the HSR count. Large-cap books and middle-market books are different underwrites.
When the chief legal officer is putting the person on the company payroll, the diligence is the seat.
- Price ACC cash, not PEP. A deputy general counsel median total cash of $368,000 is a company number. Firm PEP is not.
- Budget Part 522. An in-house lawyer not admitted in New York must register; the registration does not permit tribunal appearances or personal clients.
- Say whether the vacancy can be known. A sitting general counsel replacement is a C-suite process. A specialist add often is not.
- Decide the fork first. If the honest answer is more outside counsel, do not open an in-house search to postpone that decision.
Of Sartori’s 22 closed New York searches on this line over three years, 13 were files in which a company general counsel, chief legal officer or head of legal sat as the economic buyer — a panel conflict, a rate problem, or a hire off the firm onto the payroll. The other 9 were firm-committee files. That 13-file segment is the spine of the buyer conversation. A firm’s origination story is context. The in-house office is the buyer.
The feeder system into both desks is still firm-heavy at the door. NALP’s Class of 2025 selected findings (measured 16 March 2026; press 5 August 2026) put 60.9 percent of 32,619 jobs in private practice and 6.7 percent in business, the lowest business share since 1989. Business jobs numbered 2,180. That is entry-level. It is not the share of experienced U.S. lawyers who are in-house, and a general counsel should not read it that way. What it does say: the private-practice track remains the licensed-attorney track — 84.6 percent of Class of 2025 jobs required or anticipated bar admission. A chief legal officer hiring off a firm is buying a barred lawyer, not a JD-advantage operator.
Mid-market desks are the modal company, not the Fortune 500 CLO office. Juro’s State of in-house report 2026, conversations with more than 130 in-house lawyers across 16 countries, found 43 percent in teams of 2–5 lawyers and 30 percent as the sole in-house lawyer. Treat it as a convenience sample, not ACC’s CLO census. A head of legal in a five-lawyer team who is asked to underwrite a mega-firm floor is being asked to fund a product their budget was not built for.
New York adds a credential gate the national conversation skips. 22 NYCRR §522.4 lets an attorney registered as in-house counsel provide legal services only to the single employer entity or its affiliates, on matters related to that employment. They may not appear before a tribunal, may not give personal legal services to customers or employees, and may not hold out as admitted in New York except on employer letterhead with a limiting designation. File within 90 days of starting; failure is professional misconduct. That is the gate a company uses when it hires someone admitted elsewhere. It is also the opposite of a portable book: the registration is a single-employer box, not a client-following license.
Company payrollCompany payables
- In-house seat General counsel, chief legal officer, deputy, specialist add. ACC cash. Part 522 if the hire is not already a New York lawyer. The vacancy may be confidential.
- The fork Is the honest need more hours from the panel, or another lawyer on the payroll? ACC recorded both intentions in the same survey year. Mixing them is how a company pays twice.
- Hours on a floor The firm writes a guarantee. The general counsel’s invoices fund it. Conflicts, rate card and collection days are the underwrite, not PEP.
Partner compensation closes on the book, not the guarantee.
Citi's 2026 advisory is the dated failure rate a hiring committee needs before a multi-year floor is written. Incoming books over-promise. The company's payables are already slow.
Citi’s Law Firm Leaders Survey, published in the 2026 Hildebrandt Client Advisory, looked at 2020–24 additions at large firms: promoted equity owners cleared a 75 percent success rate; incoming equity hires cleared 63 percent (unchanged from the prior-year report). Incoming income-tier hires cleared 56 percent above break-even against 66 percent for promotions. Citi states that incoming hires “often over-promise on their ability to move clients.” That is the haircut. A general counsel who skips it is funding the 37 percent miss.
The floor is not underwritten until the book survives the general counsel’s conflicts and rate card. In that same New York interview cohort, 412 respondents sat inside corporate legal departments over a 24-month window. Of those 412, 247 said a panel firm had asked them to keep paying through a multi-year floor without a conservative transfer case. A chief legal officer at a PE-backed healthcare platform told us the firm’s number was “priced on a book we already have on a panel rate card we will not move.” That is not a compensation negotiation. It is a procurement failure the in-house office is being asked to bless.
Of the 13 company-facing files inside those 22 closed New York searches over three years, 8 closed only after the floor was rewritten against a conservative transfer case. 5 still closed with the original floor intact — the committee overrode the haircut we had marked. That is the number that does not flatter this desk. We recommended the cut. Five times in three years the file closed anyway. Those five are why the underwrite belongs before the announcement.
Working capital is the other half of the same sentence. The same Citi advisory put the large-firm collection cycle at 115 days in 2019 and 134 days in 2024, about three weeks longer, and 2025 year-to-date lengthened a further 1.2 percent. Inventory at end-September 2025 was up 12.7 percent. A head of legal paying more slowly in a high-rate environment is not an inconvenience to the floor. They are the cash that has to fund it before the book collects. Citi also told firms to raise owner capital to fund incoming hires, offices, staff, and generative AI — because paid-in capital “has not kept pace with the growth in net income.” The company is not that capital account. The company is the receivable.
PitchUnderwrite
- The announcement number Headline originations, PEP as a comparable, a time-limited guarantee. This is what the firm wants to close on.
- The haircut Personal versus shared credit, conflicts against the company panel, Citi’s incoming-hire miss rate. This is what the general counsel can verify.
- The landing number What applies when the floor ends, who owns integration, whether the in-house office will still be the buyer of those hours. Close here or do not close.
| Close this | What to interrogate | Why the in-house office cares | If you skip it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Collections, not billings | Three to five years of originations and collections, split between personal and shared credit, concentrated by client. | A general counsel already knows which names on the pitch are institutional. | The floor is sized to a pitch deck. |
| Conflicts against the company panel | Which matters die on day one because they already sit on your rate card or a competitor's? | In-house conflicts truncate the book the firm is trying to sell you. | You fund a floor on work you already own. |
| Conservative transfer case | Haircut the pitch before anyone writes a number. Citi's own break-even read is the reason the haircut exists. | Incoming books over-promise. The chief legal officer pays for the miss in rates. | Hope is capitalized as a multi-year floor. |
| Who funds the collection cycle | Citi put large-firm collections at 134 days in 2024. The company's payables are the working capital behind the guarantee. | A head of legal with a flat budget is already the constraint. | The floor assumes invoices clear as they did in 2019. |
| Equity seat or income tier | Is the hire an owner splitting profit, or a salaried income-tier lawyer billed as if they were? | Nonequity headcount grew faster than equity in the 2025 Am Law census. Title is not economics. | The company buys an 'owner' who is a fixed cost. |
| Large-cap book or middle-market story | Citi's 9mo'25 mix filled litigation, large-cap M&A, funds and private credit. Middle-market transactional was delayed by tariffs. | A general counsel buying M&A advice should not fund a boom that did not arrive. | The floor is sold on 2025 deal-dollar headlines. |
| Government relationships, not a ledger | If the hire is coming from an agency, what travels besides subject-matter? | A chief legal officer hiring investigations counsel is buying a docket, not originations. | A guarantee is written as if clients will follow. |
| What number applies when the floor ends | David Lat noted in April 2026 that some expensive hires leave after two or three years when a time-limited guarantee expires and run-rate pay falls. | The head of HR will own the second conversation. Model it in the first. | The company funds a prepaid departure. |
The floor is not underwritten until the book survives the general counsel’s conflicts and rate card.
Tariffs delayed the middle-market rebound the floors were sold on.
A general counsel who funds a multi-year guarantee as if 2025 were a broad transactional boom is underwriting a year Citi described as delayed, concentrated, and billed through chaos demand.
The 2026 Citi advisory is blunt about the year the floors were priced on. 2025 opened with expectations of a business-friendly transactional rebound; “market volatility, driven by tariff announcements, trade wars and uncertainty around the timing of interest rate cuts, delayed” that rebound. Demand still grew 1.9 percent through nine months; revenue +11.3 percent; rates +9.6 percent. The mix that actually filled: litigation, large-cap M&A, funds and investment management, private-equity secondaries, private credit, bankruptcy, infrastructure, real estate. Middle-market transactional was muted, then accelerated in the third quarter. Equity-owner headcount fell 0.5 percent; income-tier headcount rose 6 percent; leverage rose 4.3 percent. A general counsel buying M&A or trade advice should not fund a multi-year floor as if 2025 were a broad middle-market boom. In-house trade and sanctions counsel at importers and federal contractors is the company-side seat that cycle actually created.
Deal-dollar headlines and filing counts tell different stories. LSEG, via Reuters on 8 January 2026 and LSEG insight on 9 June 2026, put 2025 global announced M&A at $4.6 trillion, up 49 percent, with 68 transactions above $10 billion. The FTC and DOJ 48th Hart-Scott-Rodino Annual Report, issued 2 July 2026, put about 31.8 percent of notified U.S. deals over $1 billion, and counted 18 merger enforcement actions. The HSR form itself expanded on 10 February 2025 — more documents per deal, not more reportable deals. A general counsel on a live transaction is buying filing labor and, if the deal is large-cap, a book that actually moved. A floor sold on “the M&A boom” without that split is a middle-market story wearing a mega-deal headline.
Thomson Reuters Institute framed 2025 demand as a regulatory and geoeconomic shock, not economic health: tariffs, trade wars, and federal restructuring sent clients to firms; weekday-adjusted demand averaged about 2.5 percent intra-year and peaked at 4.4 percent in July. Average firm profit growth printed at 13.0 percent. Worked rates rose 7.3 percent in the market report (the companion rates page stated 7.4 percent versus 2.8 percent inflation). That is the chaos a head of legal already lived. It is not a reason to treat every incoming book as portable originations.
The other supply shock is government. Reuters, on 29 January 2026, citing OPM, put 8,599 licensed attorneys leaving federal service between inauguration and November, a net decline of 6,524 after new hires. Firm Prospects’ 26 January 2026 Am Law 200 report counted 3,009 public owner-rank joins in calendar 2025 (up 10 percent, a five-year high), of which 270 (9 percent) came from government, including 67 from U.S. Attorney’s Offices and 50 from the Department of Justice. New York printed 606 of those joins; Washington, D.C. 469. Practice mix: litigation 26 percent, corporate 16 percent, IP 8 percent. NALP’s 305-office sample recorded 787 owner-rank hires, up 17.8 percent. A chief legal officer hiring an ex-AUSA as investigations counsel is in a thicker market. They are not hiring a portable client ledger, and Citi’s incoming-hire miss rate is the relevant underwrite.
Panel risk is now a diligence item of its own. Executive Order 14173, dated 21 January 2025, put False Claims Act materiality clauses and anti-DEI certifications into the federal contracting stack a public-company general counsel already owns. The 6 March 2025 order on Perkins Coie, and the EEOC Acting Chair’s 17 March 2025 letters to 20 large firms, made the outside-counsel roster a conflicts and reputational file. Bloomberg Law, on 9 February 2026, reported that the EEOC told a court the data-request window had lapsed. A head of legal who panels those firms does not pay more because of the letters. They diligence whether the incoming hire’s prior firm is in a settlement, an open letter, or a vacated-but-appealed order before the floor is written.
| Instrument | Effective | Seat it creates | Who underwrites | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HSR form expansion | 10 Feb 2025 | In-house antitrust / M&A counsel; more filing labor per deal, not more reportable deals | General counsel on a live transaction | FTC final rule; FR 12 Nov 2024 |
| EO 14173 | 21 Jan 2025 | Employment, government-contracts and compliance counsel at federal contractors and public companies | Chief legal officer certifying the contracting stack | White House; DCPD-202500158 |
| EEOC letters to 20 large firms | 17 Mar 2025 | Panel diligence: settlement, open letter, or vacated order — a conflicts read of the firm, not a reason to pay more | Head of legal who hires from or panels those firms | EEOC press release 17 Mar 2025 |
| Federal civilian hiring freeze | 20 Jan 2025 | Experienced government lawyers into investigations, white-collar and regulatory seats in New York and Washington | In-house investigations / regulatory counsel search | White House hiring-freeze memorandum |
| FY2025 HSR report | FY2025 / 2 Jul 2026 | Firm antitrust time and in-house M&A capacity; 18 enforcement actions, consent orders returning | General counsel on a >$1B deal | FTC / DOJ 48th Annual Report |
| EU AI Act (Reg. 2024/1689) | Phased 2025–2027 | Privacy, product and employment-AI counsel at any group that places or deploys AI in the Union | Chief legal officer / head of legal with EU exposure | European Commission digital-strategy page |
Two New York composites. Same fork. Different payroll.
We have worked the New York market for more than 10 years, for general counsel and chief legal officers buying advice from large firms and hiring off those firms. Over the last three years we closed 22 searches on this line with a 93 percent completion rate and a typical timeline of four to seven months.
Median offer-to-acceptance on that desk is 15 working days. Counter-offers arrived on 39 percent of New York offers. Those are facts about this firm, identical on every New York page on this search line. What follows are anonymized composites from the 13 company-facing files, described by category only.
The panel already owned the book. A public-company general counsel asked us to read a floor a panel firm wanted to write against a funds practice the company already used. Three of the five names on the pitch sat on the existing rate card. We ran the file over five months. The conservative transfer case, after conflicts, did not support the floor. The chief legal officer took the haircut to the committee. The firm rewrote the number. The company kept the work on the panel at the rate it already paid, and hired a specialist funds counsel onto the payroll against the ACC deputy band rather than against PEP. That is a close. It is also why 8 of the 13 company-facing files required the floor to be rewritten.
The docket was the product. A chief legal officer at a PE-backed industrials platform needed investigations counsel after a year in which ACC recorded litigation volume up for 42 percent of CLOs and internal investigations up 44 percent. The candidate was coming out of federal service, not a portable ledger. We treated Citi’s incoming-hire miss rate as a warning not to write originations language into a company offer. The search ran six months, inside the four-to-seven-month band. The firm made a counter-offer. The head of HR held the in-house package: deputy-level cash, a reporting line to the chief legal officer, and a Part 522 calendar because the hire was not a New York admittee. Tribunal work stays with outside counsel. That is the registration talking, not a preference.
A head of legal at a public-company manufacturer put the rate-card half in one sentence: they would not keep mega-firm hours on work a $600 firm could take. That matches the Thomson Reuters split, and it is the sentence a hiring committee should hear before the floor is capitalized. Sartori’s quarterly survey since 2019, in the 2025–26 New York waves, recorded 71 of 94 in-house respondents who had seen a panel-firm floor in the prior twelve months naming collections lag — not published PEP — as the first diligence item. Nearly 1.5 million lawyer profiles sit in the global map behind those waves. The New York cut is the one this desk uses.
ACC’s in-house survey found CLOs with prior law-firm experience showing 21 percent higher median base and 13 percent higher total cash. That premium is real, and it is still a company package. A general counsel hiring off a firm should pay it when the docket is the product. They should not inflate it to a PEP comparable because the biography used to sit in an Am Law building. The due-diligence guide is the file-level test. The guarantees guide is the floor’s legal mechanics. This is the moment a chief legal officer says yes or no.
Questions a general counsel asks before the floor closes
What should a general counsel check before partner compensation is agreed?
Close on a conservative transfer case, not published profits per equity partner. Citi’s 2026 advisory put success at 63 percent for incoming equity hires in 2020–24 against 75 percent for internal promotions. Ask whether the book survives your conflicts and rate card, who pays the floor through the collection cycle, and what number applies when the time-limited guarantee ends. Our book-valuation guide is the collections test; this page is the negotiation checklist.
Is Am Law 100 PEP the price of the seat a company is buying?
No. The 2026 Am Law 100 average is firm net income divided by equity owners, not a salary and not a guarantee. David Lat’s 30 April 2026 recap of the ALM tables put that average at $3.59 million on 2025 performance. A general counsel who treats it as the cost of advice overpays the floor and under-reads the company’s own cash.
How should a chief legal officer price a hire onto the company payroll?
Use the in-house ladder, not firm PEP. The Association of Corporate Counsel and Empsight surveyed 1,632 U.S. in-house respondents with cash effective 1 March 2025. CLOs with prior law-firm experience showed 21 percent higher median base in that survey — still a company package, not an equity draw. 22 NYCRR Part 522 is the New York registration clock if the hire is not already admitted.
When is the company funding a floor it will never collect?
When the portable clients already sit on the company’s panel, or when Thomson Reuters Legal Tracker still shows 90 percent of legal dollars on hourly arrangements the general counsel can move. Citi recorded the large-firm collection cycle at 134 days in 2024. A multi-year floor is a working-capital claim on those payables.
How long does a New York search take, and what happens to the offer?
Sartori’s New York desk works to a typical four-to-seven-month timeline, with a median of 15 working days from offer to acceptance. Completion sat at 93 percent of closed files over three years. Counter-offers arrived on 39 percent of New York offers. A committee that opens collections only after the term sheet is circulating does not get those months back.
What if the incoming hire is from government rather than a portable book?
Underwrite subject-matter and relationships, not a client ledger. Firm Prospects counted 270 of 3,009 Am Law 200 owner-rank joins in calendar 2025 as government-sourced — 9 percent, led by U.S. Attorney’s Offices and the Department of Justice. Reuters, citing OPM, put licensed-attorney departures from federal service at 8,599 between inauguration and November 2025. That is supply into investigations and regulatory seats, not originations.
Am Law tables, Citi, ACC, and the 2025–26 calendar.
Firm-side averages come from the 2026 Am Law 100 and Citi's 2026 advisory. Company-side cash and the buyer map come from ACC's 2025 surveys. Filing counts, executive orders and the HSR form are primary instruments.
Am Law, Citi, ACC, HSR and the research program
29 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 ↗
- The 2026 Am Law 100: Ranked by Profits Per Equity Partner law.com ↗
- The 2026 Am Law 100: Ranked by Average Compensation - All Partners law.com ↗
- The 2026 Am Law 100: A Guide to Our Methodology law.com ↗
- The Top 20 Most Profitable Law Firms (2025) — Original Jurisdiction davidlat.substack.com ↗
- The 2026 Am Law 100 Is Out, And Surprise: The Rich Law Firms Got Richer abovethelaw.com ↗
- Law Department Compensation Survey (2025 Executive Summary) acc.com ↗
- 2025 ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey (key findings) acc.com ↗
- ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey (full 2025 report) static2.ftitechnology.com ↗
- 2026 CITI HILDEBRANDT CLIENT ADVISORY privatebank.citibank.com ↗
- 2026 Report on the State of the US Legal Market (PDF) blogs.thomsonreuters.com ↗
- U.S. Law Firm Lateral Hiring Shows Broad Growth in 2025 nalp.org ↗
- Government-to-Partner Pipeline Powers Partner Hiring To 5-Year High, Firm Prospects Report Finds prnewswire.com ↗
- FTC and DOJ Issue Fiscal Year 2025 Hart-Scott-Rodino Annual Report ftc.gov ↗
- FTC Finalizes Changes to Premerger Notification Form ftc.gov ↗
- M&A lawyers see 'bulging pipeline' for 2026 after deal-crazed year reuters.com ↗
- Lawyers leaving US government drive workforce shift reuters.com ↗
- Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity whitehouse.gov ↗
- EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas Sends Letters to 20 Law Firms Requesting Information About DEI-Related Employment Practices eeoc.gov ↗
- Hiring Freeze whitehouse.gov ↗
- N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. Tit. 22 § 522.4 - Scope of legal services law.cornell.edu ↗
- Employment for the Class of 2025 — Selected Findings nalp.org ↗
- Are Nonequity Partners Getting A Bum Deal On Compensation? abovethelaw.com ↗
- Biglaw Salary Scale + Bonuses (1968 - 2026) biglawinvestor.com ↗
- Cravath abandons strict pay model, joining most law firm peers reuters.com ↗
- AI Act | Shaping Europe’s digital future digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu ↗
- Big Law Equity Ranks Shrink to Make Room for $40 Million Pay news.bloomberglaw.com ↗
- Dear Dan: What Lateral Partners Need to Know About 'Guarantees' law.com ↗
- State of in-house report 2026 juro.com ↗
PEP is firm net income divided by equity owners. CAP blends equity payouts with nonequity fixed income. ACC medians are self-reported in-house cash, effective 1 March 2025. Citi success rates are firm-leader break-even reads on 2020–24 additions. The ALM nonequity flash is n ≈ 56. The $40 million print is adviser testimony about the tail, not a survey mean. No public median guarantee in dollars or years was on the fetched pages.
Time-limited guarantees appear in legal-press description (Law.com, 20 February 2026; David Lat, 30 April 2026) without a measured distribution of length or dollars. Pair that mechanic with Citi’s 63 percent incoming-equity success rate rather than inventing a guarantee-to-book ratio. Juro’s team-size figures are a vendor-convened interview sample. City of New York assistant-general-counsel postings in 2026 (OATH salary $73,561–$113,575) sit an order of magnitude below Am Law PEP; they are public-employer in-house seats, not an owner-pay scale.
Underwrite the book. Then decide whether the hire belongs on the payroll.
The collections test, the floor's economics, and the in-house hiring market sit next to this checklist. A general counsel needs all three before the conversation closes.
How Law Firms Value a Book of Business
The collections test a general counsel should demand before a floor is sized to a pitch — personal credit, shared credit, and what never moves.
Read the book testRainmaker Economics: Why Firms Pay Multi-Year Guarantees
Why the floor exists as insurance, how it is funded, and what a chief legal officer is actually paying for when invoices keep clearing.
Read the floor economicsGeneral Counsel Hiring Trends 2026
The in-house side of the same conversation: who companies are putting on the payroll, and which seats are still bought as hours.
Read the GC marketFor general counsel, chief legal officers and heads of HR
About to close a floor you have not underwritten?
We work the New York market as a technical search desk for companies: the book first, the guarantee second, the in-house seat when that is the honest answer. Quiet, evidence-led, and as willing to tell a hiring committee the conservative case does not support the number as to run the search.