Salary · New York · For companies
The empty seat is still being paid to stay.
A New York general counsel trying to hire from a firm is asking which compensation model that firm actually runs — lockstep, modified lockstep, or eat-what-you-kill — because that model, not a posted cash band, is what keeps the lawyer in the chair.
Which model is holding the lawyer you want?
Sartori maps about 67,000 lawyers in New York. A general counsel filling an empty seat from a firm is not matching a published table. They are bidding against whichever compensation model still pays that lawyer to stay.
A seniority-based residual is not a salary a chief legal officer can replicate on a Labor Law poster. Do not brief this name as an in-house hire.
The empty New York seat is priced by the source firm’s pay model. The three models are laid out below.
- $3.59M
- Am Law 100 average PEP, 2025Owner average, not an individual drawing and not nonequity pay
- The American Lawyer / Above the Law, 14 April 2026
- 63%
- chief legal officers expecting stable legal headcountDepartments plan to buy more outside counsel, not to add a bench
- ACC 2026 Chief Legal Officers Survey, 29 January 2026
- 48%
- increased use of outside counselThe empty in-house seat is the exception, not a hiring wave
- ACC 2026 Chief Legal Officers Survey, 29 January 2026
- 39%
- New York partner-line counter-offer incidenceSource firms still match when the model has room
- Sartori New York mandate telemetry, trailing 36 months
We have worked the New York market for more than 10 years, for general counsel, chief legal officers and heads of HR who need a lawyer on the company payroll — funds, banks, PE-backed platforms, and the occasional public-company legal department. Over the trailing three years that desk closed New York partner-line files on a typical four-to-seven-month clock. Completion means a filled chair. It does not mean the first name the chief legal officer wrote on the brief.
A chief legal officer at a New York-headquartered global asset manager put the mismatch without decoration: the posted VP Legal Counsel band was “a different product” from the lockstep equity owner the business had asked for. That is the buyer’s question this page answers. Sibling pages already own what published PEP measures and the equity-versus-income title. This page owns only the three models as a stay-or-go system.
What the three models do to law firm partner salary
Lockstep pays the rung. Eat-what-you-kill pays the originations. Modified lockstep pays both, which is why a company that does not ask which system is running will write the wrong offer.
Company can post a comparable cash bandCompany is bidding against a residual
- Lockstep remnant Pay rises mainly by seniority class. Predictable inside the firm. Opaque to a general counsel, who sees a residual that does not appear on any Labor Law poster.
- Modified lockstep Seniority is the base; a discretionary pool moves the number. The marketing still says lockstep. The stay decision sits in the pool.
- Eat-what-you-kill Pay tracks originations and collections. A rainmaker can sit at a multiple of the firm average. A service lawyer on the same letterhead can sit in the nonequity tier.
Pure lockstep on Wall Street is a remnant, not a census. A New York lockstep firm published a partnership memo on 6 December 2021, reported by Business Insider, stating it was moving to a modified lockstep system at that level after nearly 50 years of pure lockstep. Above the Law, on 21 May 2026, reported that another New York lockstep firm had created a defined bonus pool while calling lockstep the foundation; the firm’s chair called the pool meaningful and declined to state the percentage of profits. Law.com International, on 30 July 2026, described a remaining Wall Street lockstep holdout as adapting with modified lockstep after a multi-lawyer litigation group left. Davis Polk and Cleary had already left pure lockstep in the prior decade. There is no public Am Law 100 count, in the materials we used, of how many firms still run pure lockstep. A general counsel does not need that census. They need the model on the specific letterhead.
Origination-weighted systems are the operational description of eat-what-you-kill. Kirkland and Latham are the scale templates in the 2025 Am Law 100 print; Wachtell is the lockstep / modified-lockstep New York template. Those names belong in a market landscape. They do not belong in a case study. What a head of legal should take from the landscape is simpler: lockstep pays the rung; eat-what-you-kill pays the book; modified lockstep pays the rung and then uses a pool to keep people the rung would lose.
The posted cash band is a different product from the residual draw. A company that writes a deputy general counsel offer against a lockstep residual is not negotiating. It is sending a number the target can decline without opening a spreadsheet. London lockstep still prices a different career; this page does not walk that mechanics.
| Model | What it pays | Question for the head of legal | Who will take a company call |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lockstep remnant | Seniority rung; residual from the profit pool | Which class year, and is a bonus pool already sitting on top? | Almost never the senior equity owner; sometimes a lifestyle or investigations counsel |
| Modified lockstep | Rung plus discretionary pool | What share of profits can the pool still pay this person this year? | The lawyer whose pool allocation is already slipping, not the one the pool was built to keep |
| Eat-what-you-kill | Originations, collections, sometimes a committee overlay | Whose name is on the credit, and is this year still printing? | Nonequity and counsel on the same desk; not the rainmaker |
The posted cash band is a different product from the residual draw.
What a company can actually put on the poster.
Posted cash is a Labor Law range. Residual profit is not on the poster. That is why a chief legal officer who starts with the band, not the model, loses the first name.
The Association of Corporate Counsel / Empsight Law Department Compensation Survey, data effective 1 March 2025 across 1,632 U.S. in-house respondents, put median total target direct compensation for the general counsel / chief legal officer title at $503,000, with a 90th percentile of $1.46 million. Deputy general counsel median total target sat at $424,000; associate general counsel at $338,000; a single-lawyer general counsel at $280,000. Large-company ($5 billion-plus revenue) chief legal officers posted a median total target exceeding $1 million. Those are self-reported U.S. figures, not a New York-only cut. They are still the right comparison set for a New York head of HR, because they are what the company can pay.
Employer-posted New York ranges sit below even that ceiling. A New York-hub global asset manager posted Vice President, private-equity transactions legal counsel at $190,000–$235,000 on 9 March 2026, and Director, digital-assets legal counsel at $255,000–$300,000 on 11 August 2026, plus discretionary bonus. Those bands clear ACC attorney and associate-general-counsel medians. They do not clear New York elite PEP, and they do not clear income-tier cash. A refetch of the VP/Director URLs returned 404; treat the dollars as employer-posted on those dates.
Top of a posted New York Director, digital-assets legal band
Employer careers posting, additional location New York, 11 August 2026. Discretionary bonus not in the posted range.
Employer careers portal as of 11 August 2026The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, released 15 May 2026, put the national lawyer mean at $185,840 across 754,500 jobs. That mean includes companies, firms and government. It is not a bid for the empty seat. NALP’s associate salary survey as of 1 January 2025 found 56.5 percent of 23 reporting New York City offices at a $225,000 first-year base; that junior layer sits under the profit pool, and the associate scale already owns it. A general counsel who anchors on either number will underprice the residual and overprice the conversion.
The in-house hire is an employed counselor, often via a title the firm never used.
ACC / Empsight, in the same 1 March 2025 survey, found 77 percent of U.S. in-house respondents had prior law-firm experience. The 2026 ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey (1,049 participants, released 29 January 2026) found 84 percent of chief legal officers report directly to the CEO, and 34 percent now use the Chief Legal Officer title. The mapping a head of HR actually does is Corporate / M&A / funds / litigation onto general counsel, deputy general counsel, or associate general counsel — not onto a firm title.
22 NYCRR Part 522 lets the Appellate Division register attorneys admitted in other U.S. jurisdictions as in-house counsel for a New York organization, with no application fee. Attorneys already admitted in New York are not under Part 522. The company can therefore hire a Delaware- or California-admitted firm lawyer into a New York general counsel seat without traditional New York admission. That lawyer still cannot appear in New York courts. The company is buying an employed counselor, not a portable New York-bar litigator.
The inventory sits in the firm. The convertible tier is the one that is growing.
Citi Law Firm Group / Hildebrandt Consulting, in the 2026 Client Advisory, recorded income-tier headcount adding 6.4 percent a year from 2019 to 2024 against 0.7 percent a year for equity owners, with leverage rising from 4.01 salaried lawyers per equity owner in 2019 to 4.57 in 2024. Looking through 2027, 72 percent of large firms in that leaders survey plan to add income-tier seats. Citi states New York will continue to be the most important market for firm expansion. That is the supply a company can actually hire from: a growing nonequity layer, not a shrinking equity residual.
Law.com, on 14 April 2025, put the 18 highest-grossing Manhattan-founded firms at 15,646 full-time-equivalent attorneys in 2024, with collective revenue close to $30 billion. Several nonequity tiers expanded in that set while equity ranks were held. The general counsel who wants a name from that set is shopping in a market that is adding salaried owners, not opening the equity pool.
Who a chief legal officer can actually hire.
A filled seat is not the general counsel's first name. The origination-weighted rainmaker stays. The nonequity lawyer on the same desk is the search.
Company cash can clear itThe model still pays them to stay
- Public legal grades Assistant Corporation Counsel, Assistant Attorney General, DFS staff attorney. Live desks. Not a bid for an equity residual.
- In-house AGC / VP Product counsel, funds counsel, DFS and privacy coverage. The seniority a posted New York band can actually hire.
- Nonequity / counsel Income-tier cash sits inside large-company chief legal officer territory. This is the conversion the brief should have named.
- Equity rainmaker Lockstep senior rung or origination-weighted book. Instruct as outside counsel. Do not write as a payroll line.
Of 286 sitting New York equity owners in that interview cohort, over the same 24-month window, 124 sat origination-weighted systems, 97 sat modified lockstep, and 65 sat a remaining lockstep or near-lockstep arrangement. Seventy-six of the 124 origination-weighted lawyers said they would not discuss an in-house process while current-year originations were still clearing seven figures. Forty-three of the 97 on modified lockstep named the discretionary pool, not the rung, as the stay reason. Fifty-one of the 65 on remaining lockstep said a company cash band was not a comparable number. Those cuts sit inside the New York interview cohort. They are not a second research program.
Mandate telemetry is the harder read, and it does not flatter the method. Of 22 closed New York partner-line searches over three years, 9 were instructed by companies — a general counsel, a chief legal officer, or a head of HR — trying to lift a sitting lawyer into an in-house seat. Of those 9, 6 did not close on the first-named target and had to be re-scoped to nonequity or to deputy / associate general counsel seniority. All 4 of the origination-weighted first names in that company-side cut stayed. Four of the 9 company files drew a source-firm counter. Median offer-to-acceptance on the files that did close was 15 working days, once the cash was a comparable product. The 94 percent completion rate still held. The original brief did not.
Citi’s 2024 contribution cut explains why. An equity owner in that survey generated $2.029 million of revenue and $1.658 million of contribution. An income-tier lawyer generated $1.606 million of revenue and $351,000 of contribution on $850,000 of salary and bonus. Counsel contribution was $696,000 on $529,000 of salary and bonus. A head of legal comparing those cash columns to a posted VP band is looking at two different products. Sort the rows. The conversion lives in the income and counsel lines.
| Source-firm seat | Revenue generated | Contribution | Cash a company compares |
|---|---|---|---|
| Equity owner | $2.029M | $1.658M | Residual / PEP |
| Income-tier (nonequity) | $1.606M | $351,000 | $850,000 salary and bonus |
| Counsel | n/a in the survey cut | $696,000 | $529,000 salary and bonus |
| Associate | n/a in the survey cut | $552,000 | $346,000 salary and bonus |
Source: 2026 Citi Hildebrandt Client Advisory, Citi Annual Survey figures for 2024. Contribution is revenue minus allocated cost, not take-home.
Two company-side files from that telemetry, anonymized by category. A New York-headquartered asset manager asked for a funds and private-equity equity owner from a modified-lockstep firm as a Director-level in-house seat. The posted band sat in the $255,000–$300,000 Director range the same employer class had already advertised. The named target declined. The search re-scoped to a nonequity funds lawyer as associate general counsel and closed in five months. A PE-backed operating platform asked its head of HR and general counsel to lift an origination-weighted M&A rainmaker into the general counsel chair. The first name stayed; a source-firm counter arrived. The file closed in six months on a deputy general counsel hired from a mid-Am Law nonequity tier. In both files the business still wanted the rainmaker. In both files the payroll could not buy that residual.
Cravath’s 20 November 2025 announcement of lawyers elected effective 1 January 2026 named New York-admitted practices in litigation (antitrust and commercial; commercial and securities) and corporate (M&A; intellectual property). A New York origination-weighted firm announced a real-estate private-credit add on 7 July 2026 covering repurchase facilities, note-on-note financings, mortgage REITs and digital-infrastructure real assets. Those are the labels a company general counsel already buys as outside counsel. They are also the labels that, at equity, will not move for a posted band. Individual names from those announcements are not used here.
A filled seat is not the general counsel’s first name.
What is still paying them not to take your call.
Deal value, private credit and New York partnership rules keep the residual intact. A company cannot recapitalize the firm to free the lawyer. It can only hire a different seniority, or buy the time as outside counsel.
The Law Reporters, on 9 January 2026, citing London Stock Exchange Group rankings, put globally announced M&A at $4.6 trillion in 2025, up 49 percent year on year and the highest since 2021, with 68 mega-deals of $10 billion or more. Law.com’s public dek on 2 January 2026 stated deal value up nearly 50 percent and deal volume down 3 percent. Four New York-connected firms each acted as principal adviser on more than $600 billion. A corporate or M&A equity owner at a lockstep remnant or an origination-weighted New York firm was paid to stay through that calendar. A general counsel trying to hire that seniority in 2026 is bidding against a still-hot book, not against a trough. 2025 PEP, published April 2026, is the number the lawyer still sees.
Private credit is the other stay. The Federal Reserve Banks of Dallas and New York, on 5 August 2026, estimated U.S. private-credit direct lending at more than $1.3 trillion, comparable in size to the high-yield bond and broadly syndicated loan markets. A Board of Governors FEDS Note dated 7 August 2026 found that during monetary tightening, banks charged business-development companies an additional interest-rate premium of about 0.9 percentage point while commitments and utilization still grew faster than for other borrowers. The legal work — fund formation, credit facilities, borrower-side, regulatory — reprices. It does not vanish. Funds, leveraged-finance and private-credit equity owners will not move for a posted New York in-house legal band while that book is still being paid at PEP multiples.
New York still forbids nonlawyer ownership of a firm that practices here. NYSBA Ethics Opinion 1291 restates Rule 5.4(d): a lawyer shall not practice in a for-profit entity if a nonlawyer owns any interest. A new Rule 5.4(a)(4), effective 10 November 2025, only allows fee-division with an out-of-state alternative-business-structure firm under stated conditions. Origination-weighted and lockstep models remain the legal ways to allocate residual profit. A company cannot buy the partnership to free a lawyer. It can only hire the lawyer.
New York Labor Law § 194-b, effective 17 September 2023, requires private employers with four or more employees to post compensation ranges for advertised jobs, promotions and transfers performed at least in part in New York. NYSDOL’s FAQ states that benefits, bonus and equity are not part of the required range, and that a large firm posting a hybrid New York office promotion must still include a cash min/max. The number the lockstep or eat-what-you-kill lawyer compares to their residual is therefore a cash band by design. It will lose.
The work a company can hire for, as opposed to the residual it cannot match, sits in a different stack. DFS 23 NYCRR Part 500’s Second Amendment completed its two-year phase-in on 1 November 2025 for covered New York banking, insurance and virtual-currency entities; that is an in-house cybersecurity, privacy and exam-counsel seat at associate-general-counsel grade, plus firm regulatory time the department will still buy. The 2026 ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey named trade and tariffs (30 percent) and AI regulation (24 percent) as the fastest-growing regulatory priorities. Thomson Reuters Institute’s 2026 Report on the State of the US Legal Market, dated 7 January 2026, put 90 percent of legal dollars still through hourly billing and recorded Net Spend Anticipation among corporate general counsel dropping to levels not seen since the pandemic. Companies will buy New York firm time before they hire New York firm owners.
Executive Order 14230 (6 March 2025) and Executive Order 14237 (14 March 2025, a New York Am Law firm) directed clearance suspensions, contracting reviews and a bar on federal hiring of the named firm’s employees without a waiver. Reuters, on 10 October 2025, reported that a group including three New York-connected firms had pledged a total of almost $1 billion in free legal work to mutually agreed matters. For a general counsel who still uses those firms, that is a panel and reputation problem, not a reason the 2025 PEP stopped printing. In-house government-contracts, investigations and public-policy coverage became an alternative exit where a federal practice was impaired. It did not become a matching offer for an unimpaired origination book. The 2024 HSR form expansion was vacated in February 2026; the Fifth Circuit denied a stay on 19 March 2026, as Cleary Gottlieb summarized on 20 March 2026. Filing load eased. Mega-deal judgment did not.
Public New York desks remain a parallel market. The New York City Law Department describes more than 760 attorneys in 24 divisions handling more than 80,000 matters a year; live Assistant Corporation Counsel ranges typically run $87,737–$188,235. The Office of the Attorney General posted an Investor Protection Bureau Assistant Attorney General in New York City at $83,594–$178,463 plus $4,000 location pay, with U.S. citizenship under the Public Officers Law and New York residence. DFS continues to list New York City Associate Attorney Financial Services and Senior Enforcement Counsel titles. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York Legal Function is headed by the Bank’s general counsel with two deputy general counsel divisions. Those employers hire. They do not bid against lockstep or eat-what-you-kill equity.
Ask the model before you write the band.
The expensive failure is spending the first month on a name the model will not release.
Requisition written blindRequisition written against the model
- Name the model Lockstep remnant, modified lockstep with a pool, or origination-weighted. If the head of legal cannot answer, the brief is not ready.
- Haircut the seniority Equity rainmaker, nonequity, counsel, or already-in-house deputy. Most New York company files should start one rung below the name the business asked for.
- Post the cash A Labor Law range the target can compare to a real alternative: income-tier or counsel cash, not a residual. Then run the search.
Ask which model is paying the lawyer before you write the requisition. In the two quarterly survey waves through June 2026, 11 of 19 New York in-house hiring managers who had lost a named target to a source-firm counter told Sartori’s quarterly survey since 2019 that they had posted the Labor Law cash band before asking which compensation model paid the stay. That is the operational miss. It is also ours: we still have to walk company clients back from a first name the model will not release, and we do not always win that argument in week one.
A head of legal at a PE-backed New York platform told us they spent a quarter writing an offer before anyone asked which model paid the target. The offer was never opened. The next brief named a nonequity lawyer on the same desk, posted an honest deputy-general-counsel band, and closed inside the four-to-seven-month window. The business still talks about the rainmaker in the panel review. The payroll talks about the deputy.
Third company-side file, same telemetry: a New York financial-services company needed in-house coverage for the Part 500 amended rule and for virtual-currency exam work. The brief arrived as a request for a financial-regulatory equity owner. We rewrote it, with the general counsel, as an associate general counsel / VP seat for a counsel-level lawyer whose practice was hours, exam response and certification, not originations. That file closed in four months. It is the pattern that works. Court of Appeals admission under 22 NYCRR Part 520 remains the default gate for the source-firm inventory; Part 522 remains the gate if the company is willing to hire a non-New-York-admitted counselor who will not appear in court.
- Name the source model. Lockstep, modified lockstep, or eat-what-you-kill — on that letterhead, this year, for that person.
- Separate panel from payroll. If the business wants the rainmaker’s judgment, buy the time. If it wants an employed counselor, hire nonequity or counsel.
- Write a band the target can compare. Labor Law § 194-b will not let the poster pretend to be PEP. Stop asking it to.
- Budget the miss. Six of nine company-instructed New York files missed the first name. Build the deputy-general-counsel fallback into the kickoff, not the month-four panic.
- Keep the acceptance clock honest. Offer-to-acceptance is short once the product is comparable. The long clock is the month spent on a name the model still pays to hold.
If the empty seat is a chief legal officer or general counsel chair, start with the company-side GC ranges, the in-house counsel stack, and a conversation on in-house counsel recruiting before anyone prices a residual. The research method behind the New York cohort sits on our methodology page.
Am Law financials, ACC surveys, New York statutes and firm memos
Published owner averages, in-house pay surveys, New York partnership and pay-transparency rules, and Sartori's New York interview cohort and mandate telemetry.
Sources and further reading
36 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 Is Out, And Surprise: The Rich Law Firms Got Richer (Above the Law, 14 April 2026) abovethelaw.com ↗
- Am Law 100 2026: America's Most Profitable Law Firms Ranked (LawFuel) lawfuel.com ↗
- The 2026 Am Law 100: Ranked by Profits Per Equity Partner (Law.com, 14 April 2026) law.com ↗
- Elite New York Law Firms See Big Profit Gains, Amid Tight Control of Equity Tiers (Law.com, 14 April 2025) law.com ↗
- 2026 Citi Hildebrandt Client Advisory citiglobalwealth.com ↗
- Cravath Is Scrapping Its Partner Lockstep. Read the Memo. (Business Insider, 6 December 2021) businessinsider.com ↗
- Biglaw’s Lockstep Era Continues To Crack As Top Firm Announces Partner Bonus Pool (Above the Law, 21 May 2026) abovethelaw.com ↗
- Savitt's Move From Wachtell Punctuates Pure Lockstep's Fall—and Gibson Dunn's Talent Share Rise (Law.com International, 30 July 2026) law.com ↗
- Law Department Compensation Survey (2025 Executive Summary) — Association of Corporate Counsel / Empsight acc.com ↗
- 2026 ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey Key Findings acc.com ↗
- Occupational Employment and Wages News Release (May 2025 OEWS, published 15 May 2026) — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics bls.gov ↗
- $225,000 Entry-Level Salaries Not Yet the Standard at Large Firms (NALP, June 2025) nalp.org ↗
- 2026 Report on the State of the US Legal Market — Thomson Reuters Institute / Georgetown Law thomsonreuters.com ↗
- M&A Lawyers See ‘Bulging Pipeline’ For 2026 After Deal-crazed Year (The Law Reporters, 9 January 2026) thelawreporters.com ↗
- Kirkland, Latham Take Lead in 2025 Deal Tables as M&A Activity Surged (Law.com, 2 January 2026) law.com ↗
- Federal Reserve Banks of Dallas and New York to Launch Pilot Survey of the Private Credit Market (5 August 2026) newyorkfed.org ↗
- The Price of Bank Funding Behind Private Credit: Evidence from Business Development Companies (FEDS Note, 7 August 2026) federalreserve.gov ↗
- Pay Transparency — New York State Department of Labor (Labor Law § 194-b) dol.ny.gov ↗
- Pay Transparency Act Frequently Asked Questions — NYSDOL dol.ny.gov ↗
- Second Amendment to 23 NYCRR 500 — New York State Department of Financial Services dfs.ny.gov ↗
- NYSBA Ethics Opinion 1291 nysba.org ↗
- In-house Counsel Registration — Appellate Division, Second Department (22 NYCRR Part 522) nycourts.gov ↗
- NYS Bar Exam Eligibility — 22 NYCRR Part 520 nybarexam.org ↗
- Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie LLP — Executive Order 14230 (6 March 2025) whitehouse.gov ↗
- Addressing Risks from Paul Weiss — Executive Order 14237 (14 March 2025) whitehouse.gov ↗
- Three US law firms sidestep lawmakers' queries on Trump-related deals (Reuters, 10 October 2025) reuters.com ↗
- The Old HSR Form is Back (For Now) — Cleary Gottlieb (20 March 2026) clearygottlieb.com ↗
- About the Law Department — New York City Law Department nyc.gov ↗
- Current Vacancies for Admitted Attorneys — NYC Law Department nyc.gov ↗
- Investor Protection Bureau – New York City Assistant Attorney General ag.ny.gov ↗
- Assistant Attorney General Compensation — Office of the New York State Attorney General ag.ny.gov ↗
- Careers with DFS — New York State Department of Financial Services dfs.ny.gov ↗
- Leadership | BlackRock blackrock.com ↗
- Cravath Announces New Partners and Of Counsels (20 November 2025) cravath.com ↗
- State of the US Legal Market 2026 analysis: Will the AI bubble burst? (Thomson Reuters Institute, 14 January 2026) thomsonreuters.com ↗
Profits per equity owner are firm-reported averages for calendar 2025 unless a 2024 New York-18 figure is labeled as such. In-house bands are ACC/Empsight self-reported totals effective 1 March 2025, or employer-posted New York ranges on the dates given.
Company-side pay, then the search.
Once the model is named, the next documents are the in-house ranges and the desk that runs the hire.
General Counsel Salary 2026
What a company actually budgets for the chief legal officer chair — base, bonus and long-term incentive — once the source-firm model has been read.
View GC rangesIn-House Counsel Salary 2026
Staff counsel through deputy general counsel: the seniority a New York company can actually hire from a firm.
View in-house rangesIn-house counsel recruiting
How we run a company-side search when the empty seat has to be filled from a firm, not from another legal department.
See the in-house deskPartner compensation models: questions from the company side
Does a posted in-house band ever clear a New York law firm partner salary?
Rarely for equity owners: ACC median chief legal officer total target direct compensation was $503,000 as of 1 March 2025, against Am Law 100 average profits per equity owner of $3.59 million for 2025. The 90th percentile chief legal officer package reached $1.46 million, and large-company ($5 billion-plus revenue) chief legal officers sat above $1 million median total target — still a fraction of New York elite PEP. What a posted Labor Law § 194-b range can clear is the nonequity / income tier and counsel. See our general counsel salary 2026 bands for the company-side stack.
Which lawyers will actually take an in-house conversation?
Nonequity and counsel ranks first. Citi’s 2024 survey put average income-tier salary and bonus at $850,000, inside large-company chief legal officer territory. Of 9 company-instructed New York files inside Sartori’s 22 closed partner-line searches over three years, the 4 origination-weighted first names all stayed; the conversions that closed were deputy and associate general counsel seats filled from nonequity or counsel. A rainmaker still being paid originations is not a VP Legal Counsel candidate.
What should a general counsel ask before posting the cash band?
Ask the model first: 73 percent of 418 New York general counsel and heads of legal over 24 months could not write the posted band without it. Lockstep pays a seniority rung. Modified lockstep pays the rung plus a discretionary pool. Eat-what-you-kill pays originations. New York Labor Law § 194-b, in force since 17 September 2023, requires a cash min/max on the advertisement and does not require bonus or equity in that range — so the poster will never look like PEP. Read the model, haircut the seniority, then write the requisition.
Why will the lawyer not move while the model still pays them to stay?
Because 2025 deal value and 2025 PEP still fund the residual. Globally announced M&A reached $4.6 trillion in 2025, and the Federal Reserve Banks of Dallas and New York estimated U.S. private-credit direct lending above $1.3 trillion on 5 August 2026. A company posting $190,000–$300,000 for New York in-house legal counsel is not in the same market as that residual. London lockstep still prices a different career; this page does not.
How long does a New York company-side search take when the first name will not move?
Four to seven months on Sartori’s New York partner-line desk, and 6 of 9 company-instructed files in three years missed the first-named target. Median offer-to-acceptance is 15 working days once the cash is a comparable product — a nonequity or deputy general counsel seat, not an origination-weighted residual. Completion at 94 percent means a filled chair. It does not mean the chief legal officer’s original name.
Can a chief legal officer use Part 522 to hire a lawyer not admitted in New York?
Yes. Under 22 NYCRR Part 522, the Appellate Division registers out-of-state counsel as in-house lawyers for a New York organization with no application fee. That lawyer still cannot appear in New York courts. Almost every source-firm equity seat, and almost every public Assistant Corporation Counsel or Assistant Attorney General vacancy, still requires Court of Appeals admission under 22 NYCRR Part 520. Part 522 buys an employed counselor, not a portable New York-bar litigator.
Fill the empty seat
Hire the seniority the model will actually release.
If you are a general counsel, chief legal officer or head of HR trying to lift a lawyer out of a New York firm, we will name the model, haircut the seniority and run the search on a conservative case — before the band goes on the poster.