Law firm CFO salary in 2026

PwC’s June 2025 Senior Administrative Leaders report measures chief financial officer base salary as of 1 January 2025, bonus awarded for the year ending 2024, and aggregate compensation as of 1 January 2025. The footnote on the aggregate table says aggregate compensation combines base salary and bonus. In the AmLaw 100 xNYC cell the CFO median base was $672,500 (n=32), the median bonus was $187,500 (n=30), and the median aggregate was $817,500 (n=32).

Add the first two medians and the sum is $860,000. That is $42,500 above the aggregate median of $817,500. The gap is arithmetic, not a missing benefit. Each column is its own set of firms. Two firms can sit in the base table and not in the bonus table. A reader who pastes $672,500 and $187,500 into an offer letter has built a package the survey did not publish.

The same rule applies to the prior cell. The June 2024 report, group “AmLaw 100 xNYC - Firms (44 members),” shows a CFO median base of $595,000 as of 1 January 2024 (n=35), a median bonus of $165,000 for the year ending 2023 (n=35), and a median aggregate of $725,000 as of 1 January 2024 (n=35). $595,000 plus $165,000 is $760,000, which is $35,000 above that year’s aggregate median. The non-additivity is a property of the table, not a one-year glitch.

Quartile labels run the other way from a spreadsheet habit. PwC’s own guide, in the companion Finance & Operations sample, says the third-quartile value is the entry point to the bottom 25 percent. On the CFO base line for 1 January 2025, the 1st quartile is $771,554, the median is $672,500, and the 3rd quartile is $544,208. The higher number is the 1st quartile. Quoting “$544,208 at the top quartile” reverses the survey.

The move from the 2024 cell to the 2025 cell is not a matched-firm raise. Membership went from 44 firms to 45. The 2025 CFO base line is marked ‡ because 32 of 45 firms responded (71.1 percent); the 2024 CFO base line is not, because 35 of 44 responded (79.5 percent). Within those limits the median base is $77,500 higher ($672,500 minus $595,000), which is 13.0 percent of $595,000. The median aggregate moved from $725,000 to $817,500, a difference of $92,500, or 12.8 percent of $725,000.

PwC’s public page for the survey says submissions for the 2026 Senior Administrative Leaders report were due on 8 May 2026, with results expected in early June 2026. The 2026 instructions ask for base salary as of 1 January 2026 and bonus for the year ending 31 December 2025. No January 2026 Am Law CFO median from that cycle is in the public samples used here. The 2026 brochure’s specimen table prints a CFO base of $702,500 / $595,000 / $500,000, n=35, under a header “Annual Base Salary as of Jan 1, 2025.” Those three figures, and that n, are the June 2024 report’s base distribution as of 1 January 2024. The June 2025 group report is the 1 January 2025 cell. The brochure is a reprint.

For a US Am Law firm using the PwC cell, the negotiable cash in the public table is base and bonus. Aggregate is the sum of those two, person by person, then re-ranked. Benefits, pension, and long-term incentive sit outside that footnote. A committee that calls $817,500 “total compensation” in the public-company sense has imported a word PwC did not use. The report’s word is aggregate compensation, and the footnote limits it to base salary and bonus.

The UK listed-firm equivalents are single-figure tables, and they are two firms, not a survey. For the year ended 30 April 2025, Knights’ chief financial officer, Kate Lewis, was paid a salary of £280,000, a bonus of £100,000, and a pension of £14,000. Benefits were nil and the long-term incentive column in the single figure was nil. The total is £394,000. £280,000 plus £100,000 plus £14,000 is £394,000, so this particular total does add. From 1 May 2025 her salary is £294,000. Knights’ revenue for the year ended 30 April 2025 was £162.0 million. On the same single-figure table the chief executive’s total was £360,000, so the CFO line is the higher of the two executive totals that year. Outstanding share awards sit outside the £394,000. The performance share award granted in July 2021 lapsed in full; later awards had not vested into that year’s single figure.

Gateley’s chief financial officer, Neil Smith, was paid salary and fees of £300,000 and a bonus of £100,000 for the year ended 30 April 2025. The single-figure total is £407,000. From 1 May 2025 his salary is £315,000, a 5 percent increase on £300,000. Gateley’s revenue for the year ended 30 April 2025 was £179.5 million. The FY25 total is Smith’s. It is not a successor’s pay.

Put side by side, without averaging them: £394,000 and £407,000, at revenues of £162.0 million and £179.5 million, for the same year-end. The salaries a 2026 reader actually has in force, until the next remuneration report, are the 1 May 2025 letters: £294,000 at Knights and £315,000 at Gateley. Those are salaries, not forecasts of the next bonus.