Compensation, GC

GC/CLO total cash comp?

  • On June 13, 2026
What total cash comp do GCs and CLOs currently make? At public companies: 25th percentile: $574K 50th percentile: $739K (compared to private companies: $500K) 75th percentile: $1M Source: Corporate Counsel, June 2026.
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Compensation, GC

What’s going with in-house comp? Are people getting raises?

  • On May 30, 2026
What’s going on with in-house compensation now? Are raises on the table? Yes. Currently the average GC raise is 3.5%, 3% for managing or senior counsel per Barker Gilmore. Who gets paid most? GCs at large public and private PE companies. Their “biggest gains are increasingly tied to company scale, ownership structure and access to […]
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Compensation, GC

The $30M GC: What to Know

  • On May 2, 2026
What to know about the GC making $30M: Kent Walker’s total comp at Alphabet has stayed consistent around $30M ($29.13 last year, $30.17 the year before). What’s the breakdown? Base is $1M, which has remained the same since 2022. The rest is in equity. Why did comp drop slightly? It was nothing personal. The company […]
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Compensation, GC

Big company GC compensation trend: giant stock grants ($50-70M)!

  • On April 18, 2026
The most recent big company GC compensation trend is giant stock grants, in the $50M to $70M range! Apple recruited Jennifer Newstead from Meta with a $77M grant, and Meta landed CJ Mahoney from Microsoft with a $50M grant. Why are companies offering such big grants? The GC role has expanded to include strategy, counsel, […]
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Compensation, GC

How and why do GCs get raises? Two case studies

  • On January 31, 2026
How and why do GCs get raises? Two case studies: 1. Qualcomm GC Ann Chaplin’s comp has increased the last 3 years per Corporate Counsel. In 2025 she made $9M, up from $6.9M in 2024. Of her 2025 pay, the large majority was stock (78% of total pay at $7.1M), and her base rose from […]
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Compensation, GC

GC Pay: A Case Study

  • On January 18, 2026
GC pay and raises are often a black box, so I thought it’d be helpful to look at a case study. Pay is usually a mix of base + bonus + equity (the largest component). This scenario was the case with Jennifer Salinas, GC of Cerence, a small public technology company that does AI-powered voice […]
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Compensation, Market

Who is paying extraordinary comp in 2026?

  • On January 4, 2026
No surprise, it’s AI and OpenAI in particular. WSJ reports the company is “paying employees more than any tech startup in recent history” at $1.5M each in stock-based pay on average, which is 7x higher Google’s pre-IPO levels and 34x the average for 18 large tech companies over the last 25 years. It makes up […]
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