Uber headquarters, located at 1455 Market St. in San Francisco, CA. Photo Credit: Jason Doiy

Salle Yoo, Uber Technologies Inc.'s head of legal announced in September, one week after Dara Khosrowshahi stepped in as the company's new CEO, that she plans to leave the troubled ride-hailing giant once a new general counsel is in place. Days later, reports surfaced that former Salesforce.com Inc. chief legal officer and chief of corporate and government affairs Burke Norton was being considered as the replacement for Yoo, who has been with the company for five years.

There's no certainty yet that Norton will be the next top lawyer at Uber. But the search for a new legal boss at the company–who will start the job with plenty of legal and compliance challenges on his or her plate–has underscored the question of how much compensation a new legal leader at the company is poised to pocket.

Valuable Players

If Norton is in fact called on to lead the legal department, Uber could have to fork over a hefty chunk of change in order to match his salary at cloud computing company Salesforce.

Norton's most recent annual base salary with the San Francisco-based company was $750,000–a number that had steadily climbed in recent years, according to Salesforce proxy statements.

This base salary is significantly higher than what recruiters and executive compensation experts interviewed by Corporate Counsel expect Yoo makes in her current position and what they believe another incoming GC could stand to make.

An Uber spokesperson declined to comment, saying the company cannot comment on speculation regarding employee pay or rumors about its search for a new general counsel.

Compensation data provided by legal recruiting firm BarkerGilmore and Equilar Inc. indicates that a general counsel of a private company with annual revenue between $5 billion and $15 billion would make a base salary of $515,000, on average. (Uber reported roughly $6.5 billion in revenue last year.) But John Gilmore, co-founder and managing partner of BarkerGilmore, said that “these compensation reports go out the window when a company wants someone specific and that person has the leverage when it comes to negotiating.”

Gilmore added, “Based on the issues that will be in front of him at Uber, [Norton] is not going to go cheap. He led Salesforce through extensive growth, and is probably motivated to relive this challenge.”

Norton's base pay at Salesforce has grown at a healthy clip in recent years. His salary went from $650,000 in 2015 to $700,000 the following year and jumped another $50,000 in 2017.

Sources place Yoo's target bonus at 100 percent, which would be in line with what companies with similar revenue offer their top lawyers.

In April, Norton received a performance-related bonus of $562,500 for fiscal year 2017, according to a Salesforce filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Even so, Julie Brush, founding partner at Bay Area-based legal search consultancy Solutus Legal, said she “would be surprised if Uber equalled the base comp he had at [Salesforce.]”

She noted Norton's salary will also depend on the scope of the role he takes on.

According to news site Skift, which first reported that Norton was being considered for the Uber job, his exact title there would be “fluid, ranging from chief legal officer to variations of that.”

Generally, GCs of startups in Silicon Valley can make anywhere between $250,000 and $300,000, according to Brush, but she thinks the incoming GC could make $350,000. She predicted Yoo's salary might have started out in the range of $250,000 to $275,000 when she joined as the company's first in-house lawyer in May 2012.

Regardless of base pay, Brush said– and other experts agree–that “the play here is in the value of the stock.”

Based on her knowledge of other companies' practices in Silicon Valley, Brush estimated that Yoo's ownership in Uber fell somewhere between 0.5 percent and 0.65 percent–0.7 percent at the highest–when she joined the company, although she expects those shares have been diluted significantly since.

Some of the other experts interviewed for this article expect that Yoo's stake in the company could have been as high as 1.5 percent. Brush, on the other hand, said she would be “shocked” if Yoo's stake in Uber was even 1 percent.

It's unclear how much equity Yoo will be losing out on if she leaves before the company goes public. Khosrowshahi indicated in late August he is planning an IPO for Uber in the next 18 to 36 months. One Uber investor has predicted the company could be worth more than $100 billion in the next couple of years.

Attracting the Right Talent

Uber's new head of legal will join a company facing everything from a criminal probe into Uber's “Greyball” program to an ongoing court battle with Google Inc.'s driverless car division. Money could serve as a big incentive in attracting a candidate with the ability and desire to take on these challenges.

“I would really look for somebody with some maturity and some gravitas and a really, really stiff spine who is unafraid of standing up and saying 'no' for the incoming general counsel,” said Steve John, principal and founder of attorney executive search firm Steven John & Associates. “They will be best served if they've got a new general counsel who understands crisis management and who really understands how to navigate huge public and government relations issues.”

In order to bring in someone of that caliber, John added: “I think they're going to have to use money as a luring mechanism, because anybody looking at that opportunity is going to see high risk with the possibility of a very short tenure.”

For Uber, tempting the right candidate may mean handing over a base salary that sources said ranges anywhere from $275,000 to $515,000. And the ride-hailing company should also likely expect a push for equity, they noted.

“This is really a stock play for somebody who would want to walk in the door and take over this role,” according to Brush. “And if they do hire somebody who has strong general counsel experience, which is really somebody who I think they need to hire, that person's going to want the stock upside.”

The numbers would understandably be impacted by where the candidate is coming from, Brush added. “If they pull somebody from a big, high profile technology company, then they're going to have to lean in on the costs and on the stock,” she said. “If they hire somebody who's a little lower profile, then they're going to be able to have some more flexibility on that.”

And it wouldn't be unexpected for the incoming lead lawyer to get a signing bonus, Brush said, which could “bridge the gap” for a potential hire who needs a bit more incentive to commit.

Compensation Packages at Uber

Outside the top echelons of the legal department, pay looks a little different for Uber's attorneys. Base salary for senior counsel ranges from roughly $163,000 to nearly $200,000, according to statistics posted on Glassdoor. According to the website, total compensation for senior counsel can reach as high as $292,000.

While the compensation stats for others in the legal department understandably differ from Yoo's, based on an attorney's rank within the company, the basic premise that equity is the most significant piece of the compensation puzzle – which is common among Silicon Valley companies – seems to hold true at Uber.

For one former Uber in-house attorney, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preserve relationships within the company, this was certainly the case. “The salary [when I was hired] was significantly lower than what I would get paid at a law firm. Also significantly lower than what I would get paid at a more established tech company, like Twitter, Google or Facebook,” the attorney said. “But they're able to attract good people based on the equity.”

As recently as 2016, the equity package amounts offered to potential hires were decreased “substantially,” which made bringing in new attorneys somewhat difficult, the former Uber in-house lawyer said. “We still got great new attorneys, but it was a lot harder to hire the people we wanted to hire because of that restriction,” the attorney explained. “I was told again and again that people weren't happy with their equity packages and were rejecting offers on that basis.”

The attorney added that improvements seem to have been made in 2017 with respect to equity offers, though the source doesn't have a sense of “how good the adjustments were.”

Another compensation shift for the legal department came back in 2015 when the company, instead of issuing stock options, began issuing restricted stock units, which have become more common in Silicon Valley in the last decade. RSUs are shares of common stock subject to vesting and other restrictions.

“That was, you know, a big change in the compensation structure. Not just for attorneys, but for all employees,” the former in-house attorney noted. “When they switched to RSUs, I think the amount of equity that the average attorney – and probably average employee – was getting was less.”

Uber headquarters, located at 1455 Market St. in San Francisco, CA. Photo Credit: Jason Doiy

Salle Yoo, Uber Technologies Inc.'s head of legal announced in September, one week after Dara Khosrowshahi stepped in as the company's new CEO, that she plans to leave the troubled ride-hailing giant once a new general counsel is in place. Days later, reports surfaced that former Salesforce.com Inc. chief legal officer and chief of corporate and government affairs Burke Norton was being considered as the replacement for Yoo, who has been with the company for five years.

There's no certainty yet that Norton will be the next top lawyer at Uber. But the search for a new legal boss at the company–who will start the job with plenty of legal and compliance challenges on his or her plate–has underscored the question of how much compensation a new legal leader at the company is poised to pocket.

Valuable Players

If Norton is in fact called on to lead the legal department, Uber could have to fork over a hefty chunk of change in order to match his salary at cloud computing company Salesforce.

Norton's most recent annual base salary with the San Francisco-based company was $750,000–a number that had steadily climbed in recent years, according to Salesforce proxy statements.

This base salary is significantly higher than what recruiters and executive compensation experts interviewed by Corporate Counsel expect Yoo makes in her current position and what they believe another incoming GC could stand to make.

An Uber spokesperson declined to comment, saying the company cannot comment on speculation regarding employee pay or rumors about its search for a new general counsel.

Compensation data provided by legal recruiting firm BarkerGilmore and Equilar Inc. indicates that a general counsel of a private company with annual revenue between $5 billion and $15 billion would make a base salary of $515,000, on average. (Uber reported roughly $6.5 billion in revenue last year.) But John Gilmore, co-founder and managing partner of BarkerGilmore, said that “these compensation reports go out the window when a company wants someone specific and that person has the leverage when it comes to negotiating.”

Gilmore added, “Based on the issues that will be in front of him at Uber, [Norton] is not going to go cheap. He led Salesforce through extensive growth, and is probably motivated to relive this challenge.”

Norton's base pay at Salesforce has grown at a healthy clip in recent years. His salary went from $650,000 in 2015 to $700,000 the following year and jumped another $50,000 in 2017.

Sources place Yoo's target bonus at 100 percent, which would be in line with what companies with similar revenue offer their top lawyers.

In April, Norton received a performance-related bonus of $562,500 for fiscal year 2017, according to a Salesforce filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Even so, Julie Brush, founding partner at Bay Area-based legal search consultancy Solutus Legal, said she “would be surprised if Uber equalled the base comp he had at [Salesforce.]”

She noted Norton's salary will also depend on the scope of the role he takes on.

According to news site Skift, which first reported that Norton was being considered for the Uber job, his exact title there would be “fluid, ranging from chief legal officer to variations of that.”

Generally, GCs of startups in Silicon Valley can make anywhere between $250,000 and $300,000, according to Brush, but she thinks the incoming GC could make $350,000. She predicted Yoo's salary might have started out in the range of $250,000 to $275,000 when she joined as the company's first in-house lawyer in May 2012.

Regardless of base pay, Brush said– and other experts agree–that “the play here is in the value of the stock.”

Based on her knowledge of other companies' practices in Silicon Valley, Brush estimated that Yoo's ownership in Uber fell somewhere between 0.5 percent and 0.65 percent–0.7 percent at the highest–when she joined the company, although she expects those shares have been diluted significantly since.

Some of the other experts interviewed for this article expect that Yoo's stake in the company could have been as high as 1.5 percent. Brush, on the other hand, said she would be “shocked” if Yoo's stake in Uber was even 1 percent.

It's unclear how much equity Yoo will be losing out on if she leaves before the company goes public. Khosrowshahi indicated in late August he is planning an IPO for Uber in the next 18 to 36 months. One Uber investor has predicted the company could be worth more than $100 billion in the next couple of years.

Attracting the Right Talent

Uber's new head of legal will join a company facing everything from a criminal probe into Uber's “Greyball” program to an ongoing court battle with Google Inc.'s driverless car division. Money could serve as a big incentive in attracting a candidate with the ability and desire to take on these challenges.

“I would really look for somebody with some maturity and some gravitas and a really, really stiff spine who is unafraid of standing up and saying 'no' for the incoming general counsel,” said Steve John, principal and founder of attorney executive search firm Steven John & Associates. “They will be best served if they've got a new general counsel who understands crisis management and who really understands how to navigate huge public and government relations issues.”

In order to bring in someone of that caliber, John added: “I think they're going to have to use money as a luring mechanism, because anybody looking at that opportunity is going to see high risk with the possibility of a very short tenure.”

For Uber, tempting the right candidate may mean handing over a base salary that sources said ranges anywhere from $275,000 to $515,000. And the ride-hailing company should also likely expect a push for equity, they noted.

“This is really a stock play for somebody who would want to walk in the door and take over this role,” according to Brush. “And if they do hire somebody who has strong general counsel experience, which is really somebody who I think they need to hire, that person's going to want the stock upside.”

The numbers would understandably be impacted by where the candidate is coming from, Brush added. “If they pull somebody from a big, high profile technology company, then they're going to have to lean in on the costs and on the stock,” she said. “If they hire somebody who's a little lower profile, then they're going to be able to have some more flexibility on that.”

And it wouldn't be unexpected for the incoming lead lawyer to get a signing bonus, Brush said, which could “bridge the gap” for a potential hire who needs a bit more incentive to commit.

Compensation Packages at Uber

Outside the top echelons of the legal department, pay looks a little different for Uber's attorneys. Base salary for senior counsel ranges from roughly $163,000 to nearly $200,000, according to statistics posted on Glassdoor. According to the website, total compensation for senior counsel can reach as high as $292,000.

While the compensation stats for others in the legal department understandably differ from Yoo's, based on an attorney's rank within the company, the basic premise that equity is the most significant piece of the compensation puzzle – which is common among Silicon Valley companies – seems to hold true at Uber.

For one former Uber in-house attorney, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preserve relationships within the company, this was certainly the case. “The salary [when I was hired] was significantly lower than what I would get paid at a law firm. Also significantly lower than what I would get paid at a more established tech company, like Twitter, Google or Facebook,” the attorney said. “But they're able to attract good people based on the equity.”

As recently as 2016, the equity package amounts offered to potential hires were decreased “substantially,” which made bringing in new attorneys somewhat difficult, the former Uber in-house lawyer said. “We still got great new attorneys, but it was a lot harder to hire the people we wanted to hire because of that restriction,” the attorney explained. “I was told again and again that people weren't happy with their equity packages and were rejecting offers on that basis.”

The attorney added that improvements seem to have been made in 2017 with respect to equity offers, though the source doesn't have a sense of “how good the adjustments were.”

Another compensation shift for the legal department came back in 2015 when the company, instead of issuing stock options, began issuing restricted stock units, which have become more common in Silicon Valley in the last decade. RSUs are shares of common stock subject to vesting and other restrictions.

“That was, you know, a big change in the compensation structure. Not just for attorneys, but for all employees,” the former in-house attorney noted. “When they switched to RSUs, I think the amount of equity that the average attorney – and probably average employee – was getting was less.”