Aspiring general counsel can take a tip from a new study that shows 70 percent of U.S. general counsel rose from an in-house counsel background rather than arrived from a law firm.

Also, the typical GC, according to the study's findings, is a middle-aged male, living in California or New York, working in the financial services industry, and earning about $408,000 a year with salary and bonuses. The just-released study, 2019 General Counsel Landscape, was conducted by the Association of Corporate Counsel and LawGeex, a legal technology firm specializing in automated contract review.

The study used data from various sources in the past year, including LinkedIn profiles, job listings and compensation surveys conducted by ACC. ACC said there are 113,000 GCs in the U.S., and the study covered some 34,000.