Legal departments are more than their chief legal officer when it comes to compensation.

A new survey from Corporate Counsel affiliate ALM Legal Intelligence asked 47 legal departments about their compensation structures for lawyers at each level of their organization. Respondents included private and public companies, nonprofits and government organizations.

Fifteen responding organizations had more than $10 billion in annual sales, while 10 had annual sales between $10 to $3 billion and 19 had $3 billion or less. Most departments had more than 25 staff, while almost a third had between 11 to 25 lawyers, and 29.8 percent had 10 lawyers or fewer.

Respondents' CLO's average total compensation was just under $550,000. But those at the higher end of the spectrum earned around $900,000 annually, while CLOs in the bottom end earned around $300,000.

CLO compensation also varied by department size. For CLOs in the “over 25 lawyers” department size category—which ranged from 26 lawyers to more than 350—the average total compensation was more than $700,000.

Jason Winmill, managing partner at legal department consulting company Argopoint, said the large range in legal department size for the “over 25 lawyers” category could contribute to the range in pay for CLOs in the category.

“The 250-person legal department is very different than the 25-person legal department,” he said. 

CLOs with fewer than 10 in-house lawyers made, on average, less than $600,000.

“There's a wide range of chief legal officers. That role varies a lot. It's a critical role for the company,” Winmill said. He added, “They're willing to pay a lot for it but … what they pay really varies.”

John Gilmore, co-founder and managing partner at consulting firm BarkerGilmore, said that companies seeking the best of the best will need to pay more than $700,000. He heard top general counsel roles with almost $1 million compensations described as underpaid. He said that the survey's findings don't match what he's seen in the legal industry, possibly because of the small sample size.

“Because it is such a limited sample, the data doesn't really reflect a lot of what we see out there in the market,” Gilmore said.

ALM Legal Intelligence's 2018 General Counsel Compensation Survey, published earlier this year, looked at the pay of Fortune 1000 legal leaders as listed in 2017 proxy filings. On average, those GCs had a total cash compensation of $2,028,221, which includes salary, bonus and nonequity incentives.

A study released earlier this week from the Association of Corporate Counsel and LawGeex found the average GC earns about $408,000 with salary and bonuses.

There was a smaller pay range for non-CLO roles in the latest ALM Legal Intelligence survey as well. On average, respondents' deputy general counsel and division counsel—lawyers who lead an employment team or other legal faction within the department—both made around $400,000 a year. Winmill said this similar pay could indicate many division counsel are acting as deputy GCs.

No respondents with fewer than 10 lawyers reported having a deputy general counsel.

Respondents' managing attorneys, defined in the survey as lawyers with “supervision over several salaried lawyers” earned around $300,000 on average.

On average, nonmanagement in-house positions at respondent departments were likely to pay less than managerial roles. However, high level specialists, who are not managers but have more than 12 years of experience in an area, are the exception, earning on average more than $250,000 a year. The average was more than $200,000 for responding legal teams of all sizes.

“In-house legal departments over the past 10 to 20 years have generally been growing and increasing their expertise,” Winmill said. “In general, they have more resources and more funding. And there's often been a sense that it makes sense if there is recurring specialty work to have a specialist in house.”