San Francisco panorama. Unlimited RF.

California legal departments saw an unusual number of comings and goings of lawyers from 2016 to 2017, according to newly released survey data.

New region-specific data from HBR Consulting, which advises law departments on productivity and profitability, showed a lot of movement of in-house lawyers in the state.

Of the 25 California respondents to HBR Consulting's 2017 Law Department Survey, 44 percent reported they added in-house staff between 2016 and 2017. The remaining 56 percent reported a decrease.

California's zero percent “no change” response rate stands out against the national stats. On a national level, 18 percent of legal departments reported they stayed the same in size.

Lauren Chung, HBR's managing director and survey editor, said that while the abundance of  entrances and exits at California's legal departments are an anomaly for the state, it's also a sign of a rapidly changing market.

“What we've seen in California is a lot of movement in the market,” Chung said. “There's more than what we've seen in other regions. Its more of a market trend, rather than an industry trend.”

But these California companies aren't small-time startups, where rapid change is par for the course. Chung said the surveyed companies, which are in industries ranging from tech to health care, were actually well-established and very large. The companies had a median of 20,000 employees, 53 lawyers and $65 million in legal spending.

California companies were also the richest in the survey. They boasted median annual revenue of $12.8 billion, more than $2 billion higher than the national average of $10.7 billion.

Despite the higher revenue, however, in-house lawyers in the state were making less than counterparts in New York and Texas, with California's median in-house attorney income coming in at $305,837. But the California lawyers in the survey still made more than the national median of $282,000.

The average income of California-based attorneys working in legal departments was closer to the national average but still slightly higher, $334,279 versus $321,000.

Chung said California and New York in-house lawyers tend to have higher salaries than in-house attorneys in the rest of the country, a combined effect of high costs of living and lucrative regional industries like tech. And while not every company surveyed was in tech, California companies were tech savvy, using new tools to cut in-house costs.

California's legal departments increased spending by only 2 percent this year, a difficult feat, Chung said, and one that could have been due in part to companies' willingness to try new technologies.

“As far as what they're doing to control costs and be innovative, a lot of the law departments on the California side are advanced,” she said. “They're really looking at the more creative models for cost management.”