Gender Pay Gap for General Counsel Has Grown, Study Says
Equilar's latest General Counsel Pay Trends study shows that male GCs earned 18.6% more than their female counterparts—the largest pay discrepancy since Equilar began studying GC wages in 2014.
August 28, 2019 at 04:59 PM
4 minute read
The original version of this story was published on Corporate Counsel
The gender pay gap for U.S.-based general counsel is widening, according to a new report.
Equilar's latest General Counsel Pay Trends study shows that male GCs earned 18.6% more than their female counterparts—the largest pay discrepancy since Equilar began studying GC wages in 2014.
The report crunches pay data for top lawyers and named executive officers at Equilar 500 companies, a revenue-based index of publicly traded companies in the U.S. The latest wage statistics are based on Securities and Exchange Commission filings from companies that ended the fiscal year between March 2018 and February 2019.
In earlier studies, the average GC gender wage gap hovered around 11%. But from 2017 to 2018, the median total pay for male GCs jumped from $2.52 million to $2.63 million, while female GC pay dipped from $2.44 million to $2.21 million.
John Gilmore, managing partner at executive search consulting firm BarkerGilmore, which contributed to the report, noted that the top six highest-paid GCs this year are men, while women account for just four of the top 20.
Despite the discouraging stats, Gilmore said in an interview Wednesday that "clients are out actively trying to attract more women and minorities to the GC ranks."
But he acknowledged that, in general, when "you're looking at some of the larger companies you're finding a lot of men in those roles and they're being extremely well-compensated because they're [named executive officers] and they have a seat at that table."
He added, "Why aren't more women or minorities being prepared as successors for those Fortune 50 companies that are paying the most money? That's a good question."
Equilar's findings echo the results of the recent 2019 General Counsel Compensation Survey from Corporate Counsel affiliate ALM Intelligence, which found that GC pay is up as a whole, but not for women. The survey also revealed that men got an average bonus of $826,131, compared with $285,754 for women—a gap of more than $540,000.
The Equilar study also showed that the median total pay for GCs hit $2.6 million, which is a 3.7% increase over the previous year. At the same time, CEOs at companies with $7 billion to $10 billion in revenue brought home four times the total median compensation of their chief lawyers.
Digging deeper into the pay stats, performance incentives accounted for the largest chunk of GC compensation in 2018. The median salary for GCs in the study was $565,000 while their performance incentives averaged $718,000, dwarfing the median stock award of $301,000.
As in earlier studies, in-house leaders in the health care sector take the award for having the highest median total compensation, which edged above $4 million in the latest report, up from about $3.9 million last year.
The tech and financial sectors followed closely behind with median total compensation of about $3.1 million. But GCs in the financial realm saw a 36% pay increase compared with 2017, when their median total compensation was $2.2 million.
At the same time, pay for GCs in the basic materials drifted back down to earth after leaping more than 27% from 2016 to 2017. In 2018, their year-over-year pay dropped by nearly 17%.
Read More:
This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.
To view this content, please continue to their sites.
Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
NOT FOR REPRINT
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
You Might Like
View AllMore Big Law Firms Rush to Match Associate Bonuses, While Some Offer Potential for Even More
Dog Gone It, Target: Provider of Retailer's Mascot Dog Sues Over Contract Cancellation
4 minute readIn Talc Bankruptcy, Andy Birchfield Skipped His Deposition. Could He Face Sanctions?
6 minute readGC Conference Takeaways: Picking AI Vendors 'a Bit of a Crap Shoot,' Beware of Internal Investigation 'Scope Creep'
8 minute readTrending Stories
- 1Contract Software Unicorn Ironclad Hires Former Pinterest Lawyer as GC
- 2European, US Litigation Funding Experts Look for Commonalities at NYU Event
- 3UPS Agrees to $45M Settlement With SEC Over Valuation Claim
- 4For Midsize Law Firms, Curbing Boys-Club Culture Starts with Diversity at the Top
- 5Southern California Law Firms Boast Industry-Leading Revenue, Demand Through Q3
Who Got The Work
Michael G. Bongiorno, Andrew Scott Dulberg and Elizabeth E. Driscoll from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr have stepped in to represent Symbotic Inc., an A.I.-enabled technology platform that focuses on increasing supply chain efficiency, and other defendants in a pending shareholder derivative lawsuit. The case, filed Oct. 2 in Massachusetts District Court by the Brown Law Firm on behalf of Stephen Austen, accuses certain officers and directors of misleading investors in regard to Symbotic's potential for margin growth by failing to disclose that the company was not equipped to timely deploy its systems or manage expenses through project delays. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton, is 1:24-cv-12522, Austen v. Cohen et al.
Who Got The Work
Edmund Polubinski and Marie Killmond of Davis Polk & Wardwell have entered appearances for data platform software development company MongoDB and other defendants in a pending shareholder derivative lawsuit. The action, filed Oct. 7 in New York Southern District Court by the Brown Law Firm, accuses the company's directors and/or officers of falsely expressing confidence in the company’s restructuring of its sales incentive plan and downplaying the severity of decreases in its upfront commitments. The case is 1:24-cv-07594, Roy v. Ittycheria et al.
Who Got The Work
Amy O. Bruchs and Kurt F. Ellison of Michael Best & Friedrich have entered appearances for Epic Systems Corp. in a pending employment discrimination lawsuit. The suit was filed Sept. 7 in Wisconsin Western District Court by Levine Eisberner LLC and Siri & Glimstad on behalf of a project manager who claims that he was wrongfully terminated after applying for a religious exemption to the defendant's COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The case, assigned to U.S. Magistrate Judge Anita Marie Boor, is 3:24-cv-00630, Secker, Nathan v. Epic Systems Corporation.
Who Got The Work
David X. Sullivan, Thomas J. Finn and Gregory A. Hall from McCarter & English have entered appearances for Sunrun Installation Services in a pending civil rights lawsuit. The complaint was filed Sept. 4 in Connecticut District Court by attorney Robert M. Berke on behalf of former employee George Edward Steins, who was arrested and charged with employing an unregistered home improvement salesperson. The complaint alleges that had Sunrun informed the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection that the plaintiff's employment had ended in 2017 and that he no longer held Sunrun's home improvement contractor license, he would not have been hit with charges, which were dismissed in May 2024. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer, is 3:24-cv-01423, Steins v. Sunrun, Inc. et al.
Who Got The Work
Greenberg Traurig shareholder Joshua L. Raskin has entered an appearance for boohoo.com UK Ltd. in a pending patent infringement lawsuit. The suit, filed Sept. 3 in Texas Eastern District Court by Rozier Hardt McDonough on behalf of Alto Dynamics, asserts five patents related to an online shopping platform. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, is 2:24-cv-00719, Alto Dynamics, LLC v. boohoo.com UK Limited.
Featured Firms
Law Offices of Gary Martin Hays & Associates, P.C.
(470) 294-1674
Law Offices of Mark E. Salomone
(857) 444-6468
Smith & Hassler
(713) 739-1250