The remuneration benchmarking figures from the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) and Empsight showed that GC’s base salaries rose 1.9 per cent in the last year, creeping up from $557,112 in 2011 to $567,924 this year.
However the survey – which took the views of top lawyers at 190 Fortune 500 companies with average revenues of $31.7 billion -- also found that annual cash bonuses fell 7.9 per cent on average, from $590,040 in 2011 to $543,109 in 2012.

Valuing bonuses

Association president Veta Richardson told Corporate Counsel magazine in-house lawyers should still value their bonus opportunities. She said: ‘The lion’s share of compensation, year by year, is at risk, meaning that it’s tied to the performance of the company and performance by the individual executive… A significant opportunity exists to be paid based upon performance and delivering results in furtherance of the corporate objective.’