In-house legal recruiters in New Orleans

The Bureau of Labor Statistics news release for May 2025, last modified 11 August 2026, puts legal occupations at 1.6 percent of employment in the New Orleans-Metairie area and 0.8 percent in the United States. The mean hourly wage for that major group was $54.64 locally and $67.07 nationally. Legal work is a larger share of this metro than of the country, and the group mean is lower. The release defines the metro as Jefferson, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. James, and St. John the Baptist parishes. St. Tammany is not on that list. The group includes paralegals, judges, and title work. It is not a count of in-house counsel.

The last detailed lawyers row the Bureau prints for this metro is the May 2023 OEWS table. Lawyers, SOC 23-1011, were 4,230 people, with a median hourly wage of $61.92, a mean hourly wage of $70.20, an annual mean of $146,010, and a location quotient of 1.71. Legal occupations as a whole were 7,530 people, with an annual mean of $109,090. The lawyers mean and the legal-group mean are not the same number, and neither is the May 2025 group hourly wage of $54.64. The May 2025 release does not reprint the lawyers row. They are not averaged here.

The Louisiana Supreme Court’s 2025 Annual Report says 499 candidates were admitted to practice in 2025, and that 2,219 certificates of good standing were issued, against 2,188 in 2024. Newly admitted attorneys receive two certificates, free of charge, which are not in the 2,219. Those are statewide administrative counts. They are not a New Orleans headcount, and they are not the 4,230 wage-and-salary lawyers in the May 2023 table. Three instruments, three definitions.

What the filings do locate is the employer. Entergy Corporation, a Delaware corporation, lists principal executive offices at 639 Loyola Avenue, New Orleans, in the Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025. The same filing says Entergy delivers electricity to approximately 3.1 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, owns about 25,000 megawatts of generating capacity, had 2025 revenue of $12.9 billion, and had approximately 12,000 employees as of 31 December 2025. Entergy New Orleans, LLC, a separate registrant and a Texas limited liability company, lists 1600 Perdido Street, New Orleans. On 1 July 2025 the company sold the Entergy New Orleans and Entergy Louisiana natural-gas distribution businesses. A general counsel seat at the holding company is an electricity, regulation, and four-state utility file, and the New Orleans gas business is no longer in it. When the chair itself is open, the brief moves to energy general counsel search. The 3.1 million is customers. The 12,000 is the company. Neither is the legal department.

Pool Corporation’s Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025, filed 26 February 2026, lists principal executive offices at 109 Northpark Boulevard, Covington, Louisiana. Common stock trades on Nasdaq. The filing says the company employed approximately 6,000 people at 31 December 2025, about 90 percent of them in the United States. Covington sits outside the seven-parish list in the May 2025 wage release. The Bureau’s current area index publishes Slidell-Mandeville-Covington as its own area, separate from New Orleans-Metairie. A counsel seat in Covington is a north-shore listed-issuer file. It is not priced off the New Orleans-Metairie lawyers row, and the 6,000 is not a legal-department census.

The Port of New Orleans, in a release dated 14 November 2025, announced a Martin Associates study completed in August 2025. In 2024, marine cargo activity in the New Orleans Port District supported $101.5 billion of economic value to the U.S. economy, including $31.5 billion in Louisiana, about 8.3 percent of state GDP, and 342,150 jobs in the United States, of which 122,386 were in Louisiana. That is cargo, not lawyers, and not a budget for a port legal department. It is why maritime, terminal, and Jones Act work sits next to the utility work, and why a casualty lawyer and a utility regulatory lawyer are not substitutes. The pay map for the admiralty product is maritime attorney salary, 2026. Of the 19 closed searches on the Houston in-house line over three years, 5 were seats where the lawyer would practice in Louisiana or sit in the New Orleans area. 3 of those 5 needed a Louisiana bar or a Rule XVII, Section 14 limited license. 2 were already members of the Louisiana bar.

Louisiana Revised Statutes section 23:631 does not impose a notice period of the kind a UK statute imposes before a counsel can leave. On a discharge, the employer must pay the amount then due on or before the next regular payday or no later than 15 days following the discharge, whichever occurs first. On a resignation, the deadline is the next regular payday for the pay cycle during which the employee was working at separation, or 15 days following the resignation, whichever occurs first. Payment may be mailed to the address in the employer’s records, and mailing is payment. The section is a final-pay rule. The start date on a New Orleans hire is the date in the current employment agreement, or the date the parties waive.

Act 113 of 2025, effective 1 August 2025, adds subsection F. Sections 23:631 and 23:634 do not apply to a profits interest granted or issued by an entity taxed as a partnership for federal income-tax purposes. A profits interest in a partnership-taxed portfolio company is not a wage the 15-day rule forces out the door. A cash bonus that the statute does cover is a different instrument. The close plan has to say which one the candidate is leaving behind. Neither one is the search clock.

The license is the clock that does move the search. The National Conference of Bar Examiners’ Louisiana page records no acceptance of a legacy or NextGen Uniform Bar Exam score, no admission on motion, and a jurisdiction-drafted exam, with an MPRE minimum of 80. A Texas-barred energy counsel does not waive into the Louisiana bar. Full admission is that exam. The employer who needs courtroom rights in a Louisiana state court, or who needs a lawyer to sign Louisiana pleadings, hires someone who has passed it or who will.

Supreme Court Rule XVII, Section 14, added effective 1 April 2005, is the limited route for a lawyer already admitted in another state or territory of the United States who is employed in Louisiana exclusively for a corporation, its subsidiaries or affiliates, an association, or a business that is not itself a law practice. The Louisiana Supreme Court may issue the license on the Committee on Bar Admissions’ recommendation. It is not a matter of right. The license authorizes practice exclusively for the employer that filed the affidavit. Nothing in the rule allows court appearances. A court appearance is pro hac vice, under those separate rules. The license is valid for four years from issuance. A renewal application is due at least 90 days before it expires. If the employment ends, the license is automatically suspended. If the lawyer is immediately employed by another qualifying employer, the license is reinstated for the remainder of the original four years, not for a fresh four years.

That four-year term, and the ban on court appearances, is why a headquarters seat and a litigation seat are different requisitions. A commercial counsel who will not appear can hold a Section 14 license and still not walk into the Eastern District of Louisiana, which sits in this city. A counsel who must appear cannot use Section 14 as a workaround. Of the 5 Houston-line seats with Louisiana practice or a New Orleans location, 3 needed a Louisiana bar or a Section 14 license, and 2 were already members of the Louisiana bar. The rule says the application fee is non-refundable and prescribed by the Court. It does not state the dollar amount. The fee is not compensation.

The retained steps are the same in New Orleans as on any other corporate mandate. Week 1 is the written seat: which decisions the hire owns, which law those decisions are under, and whether the person must appear. Weeks 1 and 2 map the market from coverage the firm already holds, the 1,480,000+ lawyer map, not from whoever has uploaded a CV. Outreach is confidential and does not start until the reporting line and the license are settled. The shortlist on a GC search is the 24-day mark. The shortlist on the Houston in-house line is inside the 8 to 16 week fill, with offer-to-acceptance at 13 working days and a counter-offer on 26 percent of the 19 closed searches. Closing includes contractual notice, the Section 23:631 paycheck, and the first months in the seat.

Three New Orleans questions have to be answered in that first week, or the later weeks are spent re-deciding them. First, will the lawyer practice in Louisiana, and must that lawyer appear in court. Second, is the employer the New Orleans utility holding company, a north-shore issuer in Covington, or a port and terminal operator, because those benches do not substitute for one another. Third, which printed number is the candidate being shown: the May 2025 legal-group mean of $54.64 an hour, the May 2023 lawyers annual mean of $146,010, or a proxy total such as $4,447,526. Those three numbers are not one package.

A chief financial officer at a London-headquartered private-credit manager put the engagement rule in one place: “Fee, replacement window and off-limits were in the letter before they called anyone. That is the only way I will sign a search firm. The hire accepted on the first offer.” That file is not a New Orleans file. The rule is the one a New Orleans chief executive is asked to sign. Fee, the 12-month or 6-month replacement term, and the off-limits period go in the letter first. The 30 percent retainer is paid at engagement.

General counsel search is the officer-seat practice when the hire is the first GC or the successor. The city brief under it is the employers, the printed pay, the four-year license, and the 15-day final-pay statute. In-house counsel recruiting in Houston is the nearest matrix city page. Dallas and Houston opened in 2024. The Houston closed-search count is that line. It is not a second New Orleans tally.

• New Orleans market. Private-practice context for the city is on legal recruitment in New Orleans.
• Pay. Lawyer salary in Louisiana, 2026, general counsel salary, 2026, and maritime attorney salary, 2026.
• The practice. In-house and general counsel recruiting, general counsel search for the officer seat, energy general counsel search for the utility chair, and interim and fractional counsel when notice will not move.
• Houston. The nearest matrix city page is in-house counsel recruiting in Houston. The 19 closed searches are that line. They are not this city’s own census.