Salary benchmarks · 2026
Compliance Attorney Salary 2026: Law Firm vs In-House
The US in-house compliance-attorney seat companies cannot fill at the 2026 posted salary is not a mystery of supply. It is a 2025 band aimed at a lawyer whose alternative employer reset the floor on 1 July 2026. This page is for the general counsel who pays that figure and the attorney who earns it.
The posted number is not closing the search.
New York first-year offices sat at a $225,000 median on 1 January 2025. Sartori maps roughly 67,000 lawyers in New York. The lockstep those offices matched on 1 July 2026 now pays a fifth-year $385,000. A company still posting 2025 in-house cash is recruiting against that floor.
Ceiling on a 24 August 2026 health-plan assistant general counsel posting for contracting and regulatory work — six-plus years, Law Department, not a compliance-officer track. Employer posting ↗
A 2026 compliance attorney salary is not one number. It is four markets that a single requisition often treats as one. The Milbank memorandum, ACC survey and employer postings sit with the other sources.
- $151,160
- May 2024 median annual wage for all US lawyers (SOC 23-1011). Occupation-wide, not a compliance cut.
- BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, last modified 28 August 2025
- $200,000
- All-firm median first-year associate base as of 1 January 2025, across 437 responding offices.
- NALP 2025 U.S. Associate Salary Survey, 28 May 2025
- $197,200
- 2026 GS-15 cap in both the New York and Washington localities — the top of a DOJ trial-attorney posting.
- OPM 2026 GS tables; DOJ Fraud Section posting
- 63%
- Share of chief legal officers who expected legal-department headcount to stay stable in 2026.
- ACC CLO Survey newsroom, 29 January 2026
What a 2026 compliance attorney salary actually buys.
Two published instruments, eighteen months apart, plus two employer postings from August 2026. None of them is a national median labeled compliance attorney, because that table does not exist.
Start with the lockstep, because that is the alternative employer. On 2 June 2026, Milbank reset US associate bases to a $235,000 to $455,000 ladder, effective 1 July 2026, as set out in the firm memorandum published by Above the Law. Junior classes rose $10,000; fifth year and above rose $20,000. McDermott, Quinn Emanuel, Sullivan & Cromwell and others matched in public, per Above the Law’s running 2026 scorecard. A fifth-year base on that scale is $385,000 before bonus. That is the number a general counsel is bidding against when the brief calls for a year-five to year-eight regulatory lawyer.
NALP’s 2025 U.S. Associate Salary Survey, as of 1 January 2025 and released 28 May 2025, is the last all-firm read before that reset. The overall first-year median was $200,000 across 437 offices, unchanged from January 2023. Reuters, reporting the same survey on 28 May 2025, noted that 5 percent inflation over those two years would have required more than $210,000 to hold real value. New York City was one of six cities whose first-year median had already reached $225,000. Firms of more than 700 lawyers sat at a $215,000 first-year median and a $315,000 fifth-year median. Those 701-plus medians are not the July 2026 lockstep. They are the floor the lockstep then left.
| Seniority | 2026 lockstep base | NALP all-firm median (1 Jan 2025) | NALP offices reporting |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st year | $235,000 | $200,000 | 359 |
| 2nd year | $245,000 | $210,000 | 351 |
| 3rd year | $270,000 | $220,625 | 338 |
| 4th year | $320,000 | $238,125 | 342 |
| 5th year | $385,000 | $255,000 | 347 |
| 6th year | $410,000 | $271,175 | 344 |
| 7th year | $440,000 | $286,700 | 328 |
| 8th year | $455,000 | $330,000 | 242 |
Lockstep: Milbank memorandum, 2 June 2026. NALP: 2025 participant summary. Year-end bonuses, last set in the Cravath scale reported by the ABA Journal on 19 November 2025 at $15,000 to $115,000 plus special bonuses of $6,000 to $25,000, sit on top of the lockstep base and are not added here.
In-house cash lives on a different instrument. ACC and Empsight’s 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey, data effective 1 March 2025, published 16 September 2025 from 1,632 US respondents, puts Attorney median base at $148,000 (90th percentile $204,000), Senior Attorney at $201,000 / $260,000, Expert Attorney at $227,000 / $285,000, Managing Attorney at $239,000 / $307,000, Associate General Counsel at $245,000 / $340,000, Deputy General Counsel at $280,000 / $371,000, and General Counsel / Chief Legal Officer at $330,000 / $506,000. Total-cash medians run higher: Attorney $160,000, Senior Attorney $228,000, AGC $294,000. An Attorney with prior law-firm experience reports median base 16 percent higher and total cash 18 percent higher than peers without that background. The executive summary does not publish a dollar median for a title labeled compliance attorney.
What companies actually typed into 2026 postings sits between those tables. A super-regional health plan advertised an Assistant General Counsel (Contracting / Regulatory) seat on 24 August 2026 at $175,590 to $214,610, six-plus years, healthcare required, Medicare compliance preferred, Law Department. A global biopharma US services affiliate posted an Assistant General Counsel for policy, strategy and litigation on 17 August 2026 at $206,250 to $297,916.66, eight-plus years, covering 340B, PBM reform and Inflation Reduction Act drug-price negotiation. Arithmetic on those sourced ceilings: the health-plan top sits $170,390 below the fifth-year lockstep; the biopharma top sits $87,083 below it; ACC’s AGC 90th percentile of $340,000 still sits $45,000 below it. The posted salary is last year’s budget. The lawyer you need is priced off this July’s lockstep.
Health-plan AGC floor
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Assistant General Counsel (Contracting/Regulatory), posted 24 August 2026.
Employer Workday posting ↗The posted salary is last year’s budget. The lawyer you need is priced off this July’s lockstep.
Three employers, one lawyer, three prices.
The lawyer a company cannot hire at the posted salary is the same person a lockstep firm just gave a raise and a federal agency will not match.
Sartori has worked the New York market for more than 10 years, for companies and firms in financial services, health plans and life sciences. Over the trailing three years we closed 33 associate-line searches at a 93 percent completion rate, with a typical timeline of 6 to 12 weeks. Of those 33 closed files, 12 were in-house regulatory or financial-crimes Legal seats at years 5 to 12. That is the book behind every mandate figure on this page.
In Sartori’s New York interview cohort, 188 in-house counsel sitting in financial-services, health-plan and life-sciences Legal departments over a 24-month window were asked how a regulatory AGC requisition actually closed. 114 of those 188 said the first posted band never produced an accepted offer. A general counsel at a super-regional not-for-profit health plan put it without decoration: the ceiling was a 2025 budget the finance committee had not reopened. That is testimony about a band, not a shortage of names.
Sartori’s quarterly surveys have run since 2019, over a global map of nearly 1.5 million lawyer profiles. The New York interview cohort is the sample we talk to. The map is the population we can see.
Company payrollPublic payroll
- In-house Legal Counsel, Regulatory Counsel, Financial Crimes Legal, Assistant General Counsel — under a general counsel or chief legal officer, not under the BSA officer.
- Lockstep firm White Collar Defense and Investigations, Financial Services Regulation and Enforcement, Sanctions and AML. Same statutes, sold by the hour, paid on the July 2026 scale.
- Agency DOJ Fraud Section, SEC Enforcement, NYDFS Supervision and Enforcement. GS-capped cash, and the alumni those other two buyers then hire.
In-house, the attorney and the BSA officer are not the same desk. JPMorgan Chase’s July 2026 Global AML Program letter designates a Global Head of Financial Crimes Compliance and legal-entity AML officers who run the BSA program. Goldman Sachs Careers in Legal, by contrast, lists Bank Regulatory & Deposits and a Litigation-Regulatory Group inside the Legal Department, and states that experienced attorney hires come from private practice, not from law school. Bank of America’s Legal and Public Policy careers page describes attorneys who address legal risk for the bank and its subsidiaries. The product those institutions buy on the lawyer line is BSA, OFAC, bank-regulatory applications and enforcement-response advice. The CCO line is a sibling title.
ACC and FTI’s 2025 Chief Legal Officers Survey (772 CLOs, 20 industries, 48 countries) found that 70 percent of CLOs oversee at least two additional areas such as risk, compliance, privacy and ethics, and that 83 percent of US CLOs report to the CEO. Twenty-three percent of organizations had been subject to a regulatory investigation or enforcement action in the prior year. Forty-three percent planned to send more work to law firms, a 17-point jump, and 41 percent of law departments had received a cost-cutting mandate. The 2026 CLO survey, released 29 January 2026 from 1,049 CLOs in 43 countries, then recorded the 2026 resourcing mix: 63 percent expected headcount to remain stable, 48 percent had increased reliance on outside counsel for targeted regulatory needs, and 84 percent of CLOs now report to the CEO. A head of legal who froze FTEs and increased the panel is not a general counsel who stopped needing BSA advice.
The pipeline into that in-house seat is lateral, not campus. ACC / Empsight reported that 16 percent of in-house respondents went straight from law school and 77 percent had law-firm experience before moving in-house; 28 percent had changed jobs in the prior two years. NALP’s Class of 2025 Jobs & JDs Selected Findings, published 5 August 2026 and statused to 16 March 2026, put 32,619 jobs in the class, 60.9 percent in private practice, and only 6.7 percent (2,180 jobs) in business — the lowest business share since the Class of 1989. Within business, in-house lawyers were 23.7 percent of positions. Federal employment fell 37 percent year over year after the January 2025 hiring freeze. The experienced agency lawyer is 2026 firm-partner inventory. The campus graduate is not the person a company is failing to hire at $214,610.
Firm-side, the groups that are actually hiring in 2025 and 2026 are not named Compliance. Davis Polk Financial Institutions states that it represents all eight US G-SIBs and lists Financial Services Regulation & Enforcement plus sanctions and AML/CFT. Gibson Dunn’s White Collar Defense and Investigations practice describes work before DOJ, SEC, CFTC, the Federal Reserve, FinCEN, OFAC and NYDFS. Those are the labels a general counsel is paying by the hour when the in-house seat sits empty. They are context for the competing price, not the spine of this page.
The public-body employer is the third price. A DOJ Criminal Division Fraud Section trial-attorney posting for the MGC and FCPA Units, Washington, deadline 17 July 2026, advertised $143,913 to $197,200 on the 2026 GS Washington locality, with a JD, an active bar, and 2.5 to four years post-JD depending on grade. OPM’s 2026 New York-Newark locality (37.95 percent) puts GS-14 at $148,222 to $192,694 and GS-15 at $174,347 to the same $197,200 cap; Washington-Baltimore-Arlington (33.94 percent) puts GS-14 at $143,913 to $187,093 and GS-15 at $169,279 to the same cap. The across-the-board GS increase for 2026 is 1 percent. Agency cash is a feeder, not a match for the lockstep, and not a template for the in-house band.
The docket split, then the lockstep.
Demand did not vanish in 2025. One pipeline paused, another was repealed, and the seats that still cannot wait are the ones companies are still pricing off a frozen headcount.
Executive Order 14209, 10 February 2025, directed the Attorney General to pause new FCPA investigations and enforcement actions for 180 days unless an exception was made. The Deputy Attorney General’s 9 June 2025 guidelines then restarted the docket toward cartel and transnational-criminal-organization nexus, identifiable injury to US companies, national-security harm, and serious misconduct rather than facilitating payments. Paul, Weiss, reviewing public 2025 dockets, recorded two DOJ corporate FCPA resolutions plus one corporate indictment and combined penalties and disgorgement of nearly $123 million, against nine resolutions and $1.1 billion in 2024. WilmerHale, on 28 January 2026, independently recorded two corporate DOJ FCPA actions versus eight in 2024, and zero SEC FCPA actions versus six. A general counsel who budgeted 2024-style FCPA volumes can under-offer a 2026 lateral without seeing the work that did not pause.
The Corporate Transparency Act pipeline for US companies is over. FinCEN’s final rule, published 14 August 2026, makes permanent the exemption of domestic companies from beneficial-ownership reporting. Residual work is foreign-entity filings. Do not staff a 2026 CTA compliance attorney seat for a domestic company. That is a closed demand line, not a hiring market.
Demand destroyedDemand that will not wait
- FCPA trough, CTA gone New FCPA files slowed through mid-2025. Beneficial-ownership reporting no longer applies to US domestic companies. Those desks should not set the 2026 requisition.
- BSA and NYDFS still live Bank monitorships, SAR lookbacks and virtual-currency consent orders run on a clock a headcount freeze does not stop.
- IRA prices, then the lockstep Medicare negotiated prices took effect 1 January 2026. The associate scale reset on 1 July 2026. The in-house band mostly did not move with either date.
BSA work is the opposite of that trough. On 10 October 2024, TD Bank, N.A., then the tenth-largest US bank, pleaded guilty to BSA and money-laundering charges. The Justice Department recorded that 92 percent of transaction volume went unmonitored from 1 January 2018 to 12 April 2024, about $18.3 trillion, with three networks moving more than $670 million. Combined criminal penalty was about $1.8 billion, with an independent monitor. FinCEN assessed a record $1.3 billion civil penalty and a four-year monitorship. The OCC assessed $450 million, imposed a growth restriction, and required the bank to invest sufficient resources to remediate. Those orders run into 2028. A Financial Crimes Legal AGC at eight to fifteen years is not an optional 2026 FTE.
New York State did not pause when federal FCPA did. The New York Department of Financial Services’ April 2025 consent order against Block, Inc. imposed a $40 million civil monetary penalty for BSA/AML, consumer-protection and virtual-currency program deficiencies. On 7 August 2025, NYDFS announced a Paxos Trust Company settlement of $26.5 million plus a required additional $22 million investment in the compliance program for 2025 through 2027, including $7,250,000 ring-fenced for calendar 2026. A chief legal officer at a NYDFS-licensed limited-purpose trust told us the monitor does not care that FCPA paused. That is the demand that still sets a New York in-house band, and it is why a 2025 FTE freeze is a process risk, not a savings. A headcount freeze and a live monitorship are not compatible instructions.
SEC FY 2025, year ended 30 September 2025, recorded 456 total enforcement actions against 583 in FY 2024, per the Division of Enforcement addendum. Headline money ordered was $17.9 billion, of which $14.9 billion is Stanford International Bank; after stripping Stanford and amounts deemed satisfied by non-SEC orders, disgorgement and civil penalties sit at $1.4 billion and $1.3 billion. Off-channel communications penalties of $71 million were ordered in early FY 2025, part of a $2.3 billion series the current Commission describes as an inappropriate use of resources. FINRA, in its 16 April 2026 Report on Use of 2025 Fine Monies, imposed $74.2 million in fines in 2025. Broker-dealer in-house counsel still has an SRO. The off-channel headline is not the whole desk.
CFTC FY 2024 was a peak year: 58 new actions and more than $17.1 billion in monetary relief, per Commission release 9011-24. Paul, Weiss’s 2025 CFTC review recorded that the agency had not posted a FY 2025 annual wrap and that posted actions indicated a slowdown. That is a utilization warning for swap-dealer recordkeeping seats, not a reason to unstaff BSA Legal.
Two 2024 Supreme Court decisions changed the shape of the hours a general counsel buys, not the title on the in-house seat. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 28 June 2024, ended Chevron deference: courts exercise independent judgment on statutory meaning. SEC v. Jarkesy, 27 June 2024, held that SEC civil penalties for fraud claims that replicate common-law fraud require an Article III jury. The hours moved toward senior regulatory litigators and trial counsel. They did not create a campus market for “compliance associates.” ACC’s 2025 finding that 43 percent of CLOs planned to send more work to firms is the demand-side expression of that shift.
The Inflation Reduction Act clock is independent of all of the above. CMS, in a 15 August 2024 fact sheet, confirmed that Maximum Fair Prices for ten Part D drugs take effect 1 January 2026. In 2023, 8.8 million Part D enrollees were dispensed those drugs, at $56.2 billion in gross Part D costs, about 20 percent of the program. The statute then adds 15 drugs for 2027, 15 for 2028, and 20 each year from 2029. The Sanofi August 2026 posting is that statute in a job description. A life-sciences general counsel who treats it as a 2027 problem is a year late.
Thomson Reuters Institute and Georgetown Law, in the January 2026 Report on the State of the US Legal Market (184 US firms), recorded 2025 average profit growth of 13.0 percent, weekday-adjusted demand growth averaging 2.5 percent, lawyer compensation expenses up 8.2 percent, and worked rates up 7.3 percent. Average Am Law 100 standard rates cracked $1,000. Net spend anticipation among corporate general counsel fell to 13 percent in the third quarter of 2025 from 19 percent at the start of the year. Midsize demand ran nearly 5 percent in the second half of 2025 against under 2 percent for the Am Law 100. The 2 June 2026 lockstep then priced the firm-side associate out of the in-house bands those same general counsel were still posting. That is the stall, in sequence.
A headcount freeze and a live monitorship are not compatible instructions.
The lawyer title lives in Legal, not on the CCO line.
A requisition that says compliance attorney and then interviews BSA officers will produce a band that fits nobody. The credential gate is a JD and an active bar.
Write the chair before you write the cash. The in-house attorney who does this work advises a program. The BSA officer runs it. JPMorgan’s AML letter is the officer architecture. Goldman’s Legal page is the attorney architecture. ACC’s specialty ranking, in the same 2025 compensation survey, lists Securities, Antitrust, Bankruptcy/creditor, Pension/ERISA and Government relations at the top of median total cash, with Compliance and Regulatory lower on an unlabeled bar chart whose exact dollars are not extractable from the public PDF. That ranking is a pay-signal that “Compliance” as a specialty is not the top of the in-house ladder, while Securities and banking-and-finance work — the premium cousins of this seat — are. It is not a license to staff a CCO against a lawyer band.
| Chair | Reports to | What it owns | Where the number lives |
|---|---|---|---|
| Counsel / AGC, Regulatory or Financial Crimes Legal | General counsel or chief legal officer | BSA/sanctions advice, examination response, government-pricing files, the signature behind a monitorship report | This page |
| BSA officer / Financial Crimes Compliance | Often a chief compliance officer or chief risk officer | The BSA program: policies, KYC, SAR filing, independent testing | Sibling: compliance officer |
| Chief compliance officer | CEO, board, or the CLO, depending on the company | The compliance function as a whole, not a lawyer seat | Sibling: CCO pay and CCO search |
| White-collar or FI-regulatory associate | A law-firm practice group | The same statutes, sold by the hour | The competing price, not the company seat |
The credential gate is not a CAMS certificate. It is a JD, an active US bar, and, for many New York and California seats, registered-in-house status if the lawyer is not locally admitted. 22 NYCRR Part 522 requires registration with the Appellate Division, employer attestation, and biennial OCA registration; scope is advice to the single employer and affiliates, with no tribunal appearances except limited pro bono. Failure to register is professional misconduct. California Rule of Court 9.46 is the same gate on the other coast: good standing in another US jurisdiction, work for a qualifying institution, California residence, moral-character application, annual renewal. The health-plan posting’s “register as Massachusetts in-house counsel” is that pattern in a third state.
FEPA, Public Law 118-78, 30 July 2024, adds a demand-side statute the prior FCPA playbook did not have. 18 U.S.C. § 1352 criminalizes foreign officials’ demand for bribes, with up to 15 years’ imprisonment and a fine of $250,000 or three times the value, and no SEC civil track. The Criminal Division Fraud Section has exclusive jurisdiction. In-house anti-corruption counsel at companies that touch foreign officials had to rewrite third-party policies in 2025. That is a senior seat, not a first-year.
CLOs at companies with revenue greater than $5 billion, in the same ACC / Empsight 2025 sample, make 44 percent more in base and 173 percent more in total target compensation than CLOs at organizations under $1 billion. That spread is about the officer at the top of Legal, not about this AGC. It is here as a warning: do not borrow a CLO total-compensation figure to staff a regulatory counsel seat, and do not borrow a CCO survey to staff a lawyer. Unpromoted merit increases in that survey averaged 3.5 percent (median 3.0 percent). Seventeen percent of respondents received a promotion in the past year; 13 percent received a base increase greater than 20 percent from that promotion. A 3 percent merit cycle will not close a $170,390 gap to lockstep.
Reopen the band, or keep the panel. Do not do both badly.
Sartori's New York associate telemetry is the operational record. The uncomfortable part of it is ours as much as the market's.
Of the 12 in-house regulatory and financial-crimes Legal seats inside those 33 closed New York associate searches over three years, seven required a compensation revision before a first signed offer. Four of the twelve ran past the 6-to-12-week timeline we quote for the line. We still opened four of those twelve mandates with a posted ceiling we already knew would not clear a fifth-year lockstep candidate, because the general counsel wanted to test the market first. That is on us. A search that begins on a dead band spends its first month proving a number the lockstep already disproved.
Counter-offers hit 37 percent across the 33 closed files. The median offer-to-acceptance window was 11 working days. They are not a promise that a $214,610 ceiling will survive contact with a year-six healthcare regulatory associate. When the incumbent employer is a lockstep firm, 11 days is enough time for that firm to answer.
Three composite seats, none of them named
A super-regional not-for-profit health plan opened an Assistant General Counsel, Contracting and Regulatory, on a $180,000 to $210,000 band, six-plus years, Medicare preferred. The first shortlist was year-five to year-seven healthcare regulatory associates. None of them would move at the ceiling. The company reopened total cash, kept the title in Legal, and closed in the eleventh week. The original posting had been a 2025 budget line.
A NYDFS-licensed limited-purpose trust opened a Financial Crimes Legal AGC at eight to twelve years against a $220,000 ceiling, while a consent order required a multi-year compliance spend. The seat sat 14 weeks. The hire that closed was priced nearer ACC’s AGC 90th percentile on total cash, not on the original base. The monitorship, not FCPA volume, set the urgency.
A global biopharma US affiliate kept IRA market-access work on the panel through 1 January 2026, then posted an eight-plus-year policy AGC once Maximum Fair Prices were live. The August 2026 band of $206,250 to $297,916.66 is the public version of that delay. Outside counsel can draft. They cannot be the employee who sits with the executive who signs.
Your exposure is a band written before 1 July 2026, aimed at a lawyer whose alternative employer moved in June.
- Reopen compensation at intake. If the brief needs a fifth-year to eighth-year lockstep lawyer, the posted ceiling has to be able to see $385,000, in cash or in total direct, or the search is a survey.
- Put the chair in Legal. Reports to the general counsel or a deputy. Do not interview BSA officers against a JD gate.
- Read the order, not the headline docket. A FinCEN monitorship, an NYDFS spend mandate, or an IRA pricing year is a staffing obligation. A 2025 FCPA trough is not a reason to hold the seat empty.
- Keep the panel for the spike. Forty-eight percent of CLOs already did. Do not use the panel as a substitute for the employee who owns the signature.
Your alternative number is the class year you would leave, not the ACC Attorney median of $148,000.
- Price the move against lockstep all-in, including the year-end bonus scale the ABA Journal reported on 19 November 2025, not against an in-house base that a 2025 survey still carries.
- Confirm you can register as in-house counsel in the state of the seat before you resign. Part 522 and Rule 9.46 are not paperwork after the fact.
- Do not take a CCO title as a promotion if the work you want is Legal advice to a program. Sibling pages own that officer market; it is a different career.
- Agency cash is a feeder. GS-15 caps at $197,200 in 2026. Companies and lockstep firms both pay above that for the same statutes. Know which buyer you are talking to.
The service view of this book sits on our in-house counsel recruiting page. Companies that actually need the officer, not the lawyer, should start with compliance talent acquisition and the chief compliance officer pay benchmark, not with this table. Associates weighing the lockstep itself should read the 2026 BigLaw associate scale first, then come back to the in-house gap.
Compliance attorney pay: questions from both sides of the offer
What does a 2026 compliance attorney salary look like in-house versus at a lockstep firm?
There is no single published median: posted 2026 in-house regulatory AGC bands run $175,590 to $297,916.66, while the fifth-year lockstep base is $385,000 from 1 July 2026. ACC and Empsight put the in-house Attorney median base at $148,000 and the Associate General Counsel median at $245,000 as of 1 March 2025. Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2024 data put all US lawyers at a $151,160 median, which is an occupation wage, not a compliance cut. A general counsel quoting the ACC Attorney median against a fifth-year lockstep candidate is not quoting the same market.
Who actually hires a compliance lawyer in 2026?
Three employers, and 77 percent of in-house lawyers in ACC’s 2025 sample had already done a law-firm tour before the move. In-house Legal under a general counsel or chief legal officer at banks, insurers, health plans, life-sciences companies and NYDFS-licensed firms; Am Law white-collar and financial-institutions groups that sell BSA, sanctions and FCPA defense; and DOJ, SEC and New York Department of Financial Services desks that both hire attorneys and later supply them. The lawyer title sits in Legal. The BSA officer and the CCO are a different chair.
Why is a posted regulatory attorney salary not closing the search?
A fifth-year lockstep base of $385,000 now sits $45,000 above ACC’s March 2025 Associate General Counsel 90th percentile of $340,000. A Boston health-plan AGC posting on 24 August 2026 topped out at $214,610; a biopharma policy AGC posting on 17 August 2026 topped out at $297,916.66. Both overlap NALP’s January 2025 all-firm fifth-year median of $255,000 and sit under the July 2026 lockstep. ACC’s January 2026 CLO survey found 63 percent of departments expect stable headcount, so many 2026 requisitions still carry a 2025 band.
Is compliance counsel salary the same as chief compliance officer pay?
No. ACC’s Attorney median base was $148,000 as of 1 March 2025; that is a lawyer title in Legal, not a CCO. This page prices Counsel, Regulatory Counsel, Financial Crimes Legal and Associate General Counsel seats that report to a general counsel. Sibling pages own compliance-officer and chief compliance officer bands, and the CCO search method. Mixing those titles on one requisition produces a band that fits neither candidate.
How long does a New York in-house regulatory counsel search take?
Budget 6 to 12 weeks on Sartori’s New York associate line; four of twelve in-house regulatory seats in that book ran past it. Across 33 closed New York associate searches over three years, completion was 93 percent, counter-offers hit 37 percent, and the median offer-to-acceptance window was 11 working days. The stall is usually the first band, not the shortlist. A company that will not reopen compensation has not really opened the search.
Should we leave this work on the outside panel instead of hiring?
Forty-eight percent of chief legal officers in ACC’s January 2026 survey had already increased outside counsel for targeted regulatory needs. That is a rational 2025 response to Loper Bright, Jarkesy and a tariff docket. It does not staff a monitorship, an NYDFS-mandated rebuild, or an Inflation Reduction Act pricing file that a named executive has to sign. Keep a panel. Put the person who owns the signature on the payroll, and price that person against the lockstep they would leave.
The surveys, postings, dockets and memos behind the bands.
Occupation wages from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, associate bases from NALP and the Milbank memorandum, in-house title bands from ACC and Empsight, advertised ranges from employer career pages, and enforcement counts from the agencies and their dockets.
Sources and further reading
48 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 ↗
- Lawyers : Occupational Outlook Handbook : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics bls.gov ↗
- Table 1. National employment and wage data from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey by occupation, May 2025 bls.gov ↗
- Despite Expectations, $225,000 Entry Associate Salaries Lag at Large Law Firms (NALP, 28 May 2025) nalp.org ↗
- 2025 U.S. Associate Salary Survey Special Report to Survey Participants (NALP) nalp.org ↗
- Starting law firm associate pay has been flat since 2023, NALP reports (Reuters, 28 May 2025) reuters.com ↗
- MEMORANDUM TO ASSOCIATES (Milbank, 2 June 2026) abovethelaw.com ↗
- ALERT: Milbank Does It Again - Associate Salaries Are Going Up!!! (Above the Law, 2 June 2026) abovethelaw.com ↗
- Associate Compensation Scorecard: The 2026 Summer Of Salary Increases (Above the Law) abovethelaw.com ↗
- Biglaw Salary Scale + Bonuses (1968 - 2026) (Biglaw Investor) biglawinvestor.com ↗
- Cravath kicks off associate bonus season and other firms follow (ABA Journal, 19 November 2025) abajournal.com ↗
- 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey Executive Summary (ACC / Empsight) acc.com ↗
- Assistant General Counsel (Contracting/Regulatory), Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (posted 24 August 2026) bcbsma.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com ↗
- Assistant General Counsel – Policy, Strategy & Litigation, Sanofi (posted 17 August 2026) sanofi.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com ↗
- Salary Table 2026-NY (U.S. Office of Personnel Management) opm.gov ↗
- Salary Table 2026-DCB (U.S. Office of Personnel Management) opm.gov ↗
- 2025 ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey Key Findings acc.com ↗
- The Changing C-Suite: CLOs Grow Strategic Leadership Amid AI and Global Uncertainty (ACC, 29 January 2026) acc.com ↗
- Employment for the Class of 2025 Jobs & JDs Selected Findings (NALP, 5 August 2026) nalp.org ↗
- ADDENDUM TO DIVISION OF ENFORCEMENT PRESS RELEASE (SEC, FY 2025) sec.gov ↗
- CFTC Releases FY 2024 Enforcement Results (PR 9011-24) cftc.gov ↗
- CFTC Enforcement: 2025 Year in Review (Paul, Weiss) paulweiss.com ↗
- FCPA Enforcement and Anti-Corruption Developments: 2025 Year in Review (Paul, Weiss) paulweiss.com ↗
- FCPA Year-in-Review: 2025 Developments and Predictions for 2026 (WilmerHale, 28 January 2026) wilmerhale.com ↗
- TIGO Guatemala Paid Over $118M To Resolve Foreign Bribery Investigation (DOJ OPA, 12 December 2025) justice.gov ↗
- Report on Use of 2025 Fine Monies (FINRA, 16 April 2026) finra.org ↗
- NYSDFS Consent Order, Block, Inc. (April 2025) dfs.ny.gov ↗
- Superintendent Adrienne A. Harris Secures $48.5 Million Settlement with Paxos Trust Company (7 August 2025) dfs.ny.gov ↗
- FinCEN Assesses Record $1.3 Billion Penalty against TD Bank (10 October 2024) fincen.gov ↗
- United States of America v. TD Bank, N.A. (DOJ, 10 October 2024) justice.gov ↗
- OCC Issues Cease and Desist Order, Assesses $450 Million Civil Money Penalty against TD Bank (10 October 2024) occ.gov ↗
- Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting Requirement Revision (Federal Register, 14 August 2026) federalregister.gov ↗
- Pausing Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Enforcement to Further American Economic and National Security (10 February 2025) whitehouse.gov ↗
- Guidelines for Investigations and Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) (9 June 2025) justice.gov ↗
- Focus, Fairness, and Efficiency in the Fight Against White-Collar Crime (12 May 2025) justice.gov ↗
- Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program: Negotiated Prices for Initial Price Applicability Year 2026 (CMS, 15 August 2024) cms.gov ↗
- Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (U.S. Supreme Court, 28 June 2024) supremecourt.gov ↗
- SEC v. Jarkesy, 603 U.S. 109 (27 June 2024) supremecourt.gov ↗
- 2026 Report on the State of the US Legal Market (Thomson Reuters Institute / Georgetown Law) blogs.thomsonreuters.com ↗
- Trial Attorney (MGC & FCPA Units) (U.S. Department of Justice) justice.gov ↗
- Careers in Legal | Goldman Sachs goldmansachs.com ↗
- JPMorgan Chase & Co. Global Anti-Money Laundering Compliance Program (executed 28 July 2026) jpmorganchase.com ↗
- Explore Legal Careers & Positions at Bank of America careers.bankofamerica.com ↗
- Financial Institutions | Davis Polk davispolk.com ↗
- White Collar Defense and Investigations - Gibson Dunn gibsondunn.com ↗
- 2025 FINRA Sanctions Study (Eversheds Sutherland) eversheds-sutherland.com ↗
- Part 522 - Rules for the Registration of In-House Counsel (New York) nycourts.gov ↗
- Registered In-House Counsel | The State Bar of California calbar.ca.gov ↗
BLS, NALP and ACC do not publish a median labeled compliance attorney. Posted bands are advertised ranges, not salaries paid. Paul, Weiss and WilmerHale figures are law-firm year-in-reviews of public dockets, not recruiter surveys. ACC / Empsight is a compensation survey; FTI is the CLO-survey partner.
Our own numbers — the New York interview cohort, the 33 closed associate searches, the 37 percent counter-offer incidence and the 11-day offer-to-acceptance window — come from the continuous research program described on our research page.
Adjacent benches for the same two readers.
In-house cash, the lockstep this page bids against, and the officer titles this page does not price.
In-house counsel salary 2026
The wider US in-house lawyer ladder by title — not the regulatory AGC band this page isolates.
Read the in-house ladderBigLaw associate salary scale 2026
The $235,000–$455,000 lockstep this page treats as the competing floor, class year by class year.
Read the lockstep scaleCompliance officer salary 2026
The non-lawyer compliance-officer and CCO bands. A different chair, a different requisition.
Read the officer bandsA quiet conversation
Fill the seat at a number that can actually hire.
We run in-house regulatory and financial-crimes Legal searches against the lockstep the candidate would leave, not against last year's posting. Confidential, no obligation — and we will say so if the band cannot work.