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Survey Says ... In-House Lawyer Salaries Are On The Rise

By Virginia Grant
November 22, 2004

For the past 30 years, Altman Weil, Inc. has conducted and published its annual Law Department Compensation Benchmarking Survey (the Survey). The Survey is an important tool that allows corporate human resource departments and CLOs to position lawyer compensation based on relevant benchmarks. Altman Weil's 2004 Edition of the Survey consists of salary, bonus and total compensation data earned by in-house lawyers in 2003. The Survey also reports specific information related to stock options and other incentives.

Surveys should never be the sole tool in determining lawyer compensation. They do, however, provide important benchmarking information to be used in conjunction with an individual's performance, professional background and specialty area, as well as other factors. This article focuses on the salaries of in-house lawyer positions. Medians, rather than averages are the statistical measure of comparison used in this article. Some averages tend to have large outliers, particularly on the high end, which may distort comparisons.

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