For general counsel, it seems California really is the Golden State.

Top-paid California general counsel earned an average cash compensation 7% higher than their national peers, bringing home $1,319,546 versus $1,228,526 in 2018. That’s according to The Recorder affiliate ALM Intelligence’s 2019 General Counsel Compensation Survey.

Out of the more than 400 high paid legal execs included in the survey, 54 were based in California, beating out every other state. Texas came in second with 48 and New York in third, with 32 GCs making the top cut.

The survey pulls Fortune 1000 legal executive compensation stats from 2018 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It only takes cash compensation—salary, bonus and nonequity incentive compensation, a post-Dodd-Frank Act form of performance-based pay— into account.

And its findings hold more good news for California general counsel: their average cash compensation is on the rise, up from $1,268,946 in 2017. Legal compensation consultants and recruiters said this nearly 4% increase could be tied to high demand for general counsel and a strong state economy.

“The labor market here in California, really specifically in the Bay Area and in the LA area, it’s hot,” said Todd Sirras, a managing director at executive compensation consulting firm Semler Brossy. “And having a strong general counsel—it’s a valuable position.”

That growing pay may not stem from higher salaries. The salary for the average California GC on the list actually fell from 2017 to 2018, from $573,988 to $561,192.

But salary’s slip was countered by a more than 16% increase in average bonus and nonequity incentive pay. Between 2017 and 2018, that average climbed from $779,195 to $906,729. Samantha Graham, the Westwood, California-based division director for Robert Half Legal, said increasing bonuses are a trend in the state.

“I’ve seen bonus targets go up in the last year or two,” Graham said. “At one point it was 10 to 15%. Now I’m seeing it up to 30% more often than I’ve ever seen it.”

California’s Top Earners

Alan Braverman. (Photo: Dustin Snipes)

Two California general counsel cracked the national top 10 highest-paid list: The Walt Disney Company’s top lawyer Alan Braverman and Apple Inc.’s Katherine Adams, coming in at third and seventh, respectively.

Braverman is California’s highest-paid in-house lawyer for the second year in a row, with a total cash compensation of $6,350,213. That splits into a $1,600,213 salary and $4,750,000 in nonequity incentive compensation. Adams, the highest-paid woman general counsel nationally, made $4,884,615 in cash compensation last year, $884,615 in salary and $4,000,000 in nonequity incentive compensation.

Prologis Inc. chief legal officer Edward Nekritz came in third for California with $2,834,760, trailed by Steven Rodgers of Intel Corp.’s $2,794,300 and Jonathan Graham of Amgen Inc.’s $2,340,596. Legal execs from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Visa Inc., Hewlett-Packard, McKesson Corp. and Qualcomm Inc. rounded out the top 10.

Seven of those companies are based in the Bay Area and half are in the tech industry. Both Sirras and Graham said that’s the industry where they’re seeing the highest GC pay. They pointed to a number of factors—tech’s high revenue, increased regulatory hurdles, policy responsibilities and tighter labor market—as reasons for the trend.

“Over a long period of time, the increases [in GC pay] will be greater than for other jobs because the market is tighter and the stakes are higher in that role,” Sirras said.

Equity Shakes Things Up

Tech general counsel, most of whom are based in California, are also more likely to receive much of their compensation in equity, Sirras and Graham said. The average stock award compensation for California GCs in the survey was $3,352,313 compared to $1,406,657 nationally.

The order of the top-paid U.S. general counsel list changes drastically when equity is a factor. With equity included, four California GCs crack the national top ten. David Drummond, CLO of Google parent company Alphabet Inc., tops the list, earning $47,282,232 last year.

Half of the top 10 becomes tech GCs, including the legal heads of Apple, Intel, Microsoft Corp. and Twitter Inc.

Sirras said equity “tends to be where you see bigger moves” in pay packages. But that trend is spreading to smaller California companies and pay packages, too, according to Graham.

“We’ve seen a lot more startups pop up and they’re getting creative with the compensation packages in terms of offering equity,” she said.

The Pay Gap Is Closer in California

There was a less than 1% difference between GC pay for California men and women on this year’s list. On the national list, male GCs earned over 17% more than female peers. California’s top GC earners list was also more evenly divided by gender, with 21 women and 33 men—40% female. Only 26% of GCs on the national list were women.

Sirras said California companies have emphasized large, diverse candidate pools when hiring to find the best candidate.

“We have more structures that allow us to get more diverse candidates coming through and we wind up with a more diverse population,” he said. “In that regard, I think California probably leads the market. The market will catch up, but California’s gone there first.”