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2025 Law Department Compensation Survey

ACC partners with Empsight to offer market-leading compensation data for in-house legal professionals. Our annual data collection is conducted in the spring and is published in late September.

Download Executive Summary

2025 Compensation: Self-reported Data

 

Compensation Report Executive Summary

This report provides a high-level overview of the results of our annual compensation survey representing more than 1,600 in-house legal professionals in the United States, highlighting pay drivers, key market trends, and compensation packages across common legal job titles.

Download Executive Summary

Compensation Benchmarking Report: Self-reported Data

This report includes base salaries, short-term incentive amounts, long-term incentive targets, and total cash compensation across 29 in-house legal job positions. The results are further segmented across seven demographic segments where sufficient data are available.

This report is based on data collected through an individual-level survey, which was structured as a conventional online survey and intended for single individuals to report their own compensation data.

Purchase Report - Members     Purchase Report - Non-members

 

Compensation Benchmarking Results

Review the 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey Results in a convenient MS Excel format that allows you to filter the benchmarks for all compensation metrics by job title and several company and individual demographic breakdowns.

2025 Compensation: Company-sourced Data

This survey results include 93 benchmark positions and reports data on base salary, annual bonus, long term incentives, and multiple additional segments across several demographics.

This report is based on data collected through a company-level survey, typically filled out by the Office of the General Counsel or the Human Resources Department on behalf of the entire legal team. The survey targets Fortune 500 and other large multinational companies with revenues of US$3 billion and above.

Purchase Report - Members     Purchase Report - Non-members

 

Frequently Asked Questions

  • What salary benchmarks are included in the reports?

    Click here to review the full list of compensation metrics included in the full benchmarking report.

  • What demographic segments are reported?

    The compensation metrics are segmented by the following demographics in the benchmarking reports where there is sufficient data to report out:

    • Industry
    • Law Department Size – Number of Lawyers
    • Company Revenue
    • Legal Specialty
    • Geography – US Major Metropolitan Areas
    • Law School Class Year
    • Law School Rank – Top 20 vs Not Top 20

  • How is the data collected?

    The Law Department Compensation Survey is structured as a conventional online survey and is intended for a single individual to report their own compensation data (self-reported).

  • When was the data collected?

    ACC and Empsight fielded the compensation survey questionnaire between May 6 and June 27, 2025, through an online survey platform. The data effective date is March 1, 2025.

  • What differentiates ACC's compensation data from others on the market?

    See the ACC Docket article Reliable Compensation Data for In-house Legal Professionals to learn about the key differentiating factors.

  • Is the data Safe Harbor Compliant?

    Yes. Our data collection and reporting standards conform with the Safe Harbor guidelines to ensure confidentiality. We recognize that compensation data is highly sensitive, and we have instituted several important practices to preserve confidentiality.

    Compensation data is not reported where there are fewer than five participants, no single organization's data represents more than 25 percent of any reported statistic, and the data must be three months old prior to reporting. Additional minimum participant thresholds are used when presenting percentiles in a statistical distribution. See our practices on our data confidentiality webpage.

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