Interim general counsel day rate in 2026

2026 has 261 weekdays. It is not a leap year, and 1 January is a Thursday, so Thursday occurs 53 times and every other weekday 52 times. The Office of Personnel Management lists 11 federal holidays in 2026, and each of them falls on a weekday, including Friday 3 July for Independence Day. That leaves 250 weekdays. We subtract 20 days of paid leave, which is our comparison assumption and not a statutory entitlement. 261 minus 11 minus 20 is 230. The same 230 is used for the United Kingdom and the Gulf so the three markets share a denominator. It is not a UK or Gulf statutory year.

The Association of Corporate Counsel and Empsight, in the 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey, report median total cash of $410,000 for the general counsel and chief legal officer grouping, on 1,632 US respondents, with compensation effective 1 March 2025. Total cash is base plus annual bonus, including respondents who received no bonus. Divided by 230, that is $1,783 a working day of total cash. Median base on the same row is $330,000, which is $1,435 a working day. Median total target direct compensation, which adds target bonus and target long-term incentive, is $503,000, which is $2,187 a working day. Medians do not add. Do not subtract base from total cash and call the difference “the bonus.”

Benefits sit on top of wages for a permanent employee and do not sit on a day rate. In June 2026 the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported employer costs for private-industry management, professional, and related workers of $78.88 an hour, of which wages and salaries were $54.06 (68.5 percent) and benefits were $24.82 (31.5 percent). Using those published dollar costs, not the rounded percent, $24.82 divided by $54.06, times the $330,000 median base, is $151,509 of benefit cost. Added to the base, that is $481,509, or $2,094 across 230 days, before bonus and before equity. The benefit ratio is an economy-wide occupational average. It is not a GC plan. It is the right direction: the company that compares a day rate with base alone is leaving out a cost it already pays on the permanent seat.

One figure must not be turned into a day rate. Proxy statements show median total compensation of $4.76 million for 236 sitting general counsel who are named executive officers at the largest US-listed companies, 2026 proxy season. Divided by 230 that is $20,696 a day, and almost all of it is long-term equity that an interim does not receive and a mid-market company does not grant. It is a warning, not a benchmark. The filing read is general counsel pay at the largest US-listed companies.

Of the 18 interim general counsel engagements closed from October 2024 through September 2026, 7 opened with a company proposal 12 percent under the day rate that cleared. The anchor was a permanent salary divided by 260. The counsel did not take it. The company then met a rate inside the band, after a week it did not have.

Of those same 18, 4 ended before the briefed term. In 3 of those 4, the company hired a permanent counsel from its own directors’ network and stopped the invoice. That is a normal way for a defined gap to close. It is also the reason a day rate is not a retention product. We do not describe an interim engagement as if it carried the 12-month replacement term that attaches to a retained GC or CLO search.

When the gap becomes a seat, the clock changes. A retained general counsel or chief legal officer search takes 24 days to a shortlist and 11 weeks median to an accepted offer. The fee is 25–30 percent of the hire’s total first-year compensation. Thirty percent of that fee is paid as a retainer at engagement. Days already billed on the interim are credited against the fee. The replacement term on that search is 12 months. Median start on the interim book remains 7 days from the first call, across 60+ interim and fractional engagements since 2017. Use the short clock for cover. Use the long clock when the board is ready to hire.