Take a Look at Some Top In-House Lawyer Pay Packages for 2019

Hewlett-Packard Co. is no more, but the top lawyers for its two successor companies remain close, at least when it comes to their total compensation in 2019.

John Schultz, chief legal and administrative officer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and a former Morgan, Lewis & Bockius partner, earned more than $7.2 million last year, according to an annual proxy statement filed last month by the San Jose, Calif.-based information technology company. More than $1.91 million of that sum came in the form of cash, with the bulk being a $5.28 million stock award.

Kim Rivera, HP Inc.’s chief legal officer since 2015, earned nearly $6.58 million last year, a notable raise over the nearly $5.28 million she received the year prior. Rivera received more than $1.8 million in cash and a nearly $4.72 million stock award, according to HP’s 2019 proxy statement. Last year the company gave Rivera the additional title of president of strategy and business management.

Rivera and Schultz are just two of the latest notable top in-house lawyer compensation packages to be disclosed as proxy season begins and large publicly traded U.S. companies close their books on fiscal 2019. Bloomberg Law has previously reported on pay packages for law department leaders at Apple Inc., Snap Inc., and The Walt Disney Co.

Some individuals, such as Adobe Systems Inc. general counsel Pradhan “Dana” Rao, are not listed as among their employer’s highest-paid executives. Others led legal groups at companies that no longer exist. Findlay, Ohio-based Marathon Petroleum Corp. disclosed in its recent proxy statement that it paid $12.84 million in cash last year to board member Kim K.W. Rucker as a result of her termination from Andeavor, a Houston-based oil and gas company that Marathon acquired in October 2018. Rucker served as Andeavor’s general counsel.

Below is a list of 30 law department leaders ranked by the total compensation disclosed in their respective company’s 2019 summary compensation table. That figure often includes large grants of stock that for securities purposes are included within one 12-month period, even if they vest over a period of years.

To account for that potentially misleading metric, the total cash take home for each lawyer is listed parenthetically below, a number gleaned by tallying their annual base salary, non-equity incentive plan compensation, or any cash bonuses received.

• Broadcom Inc. – Mark Brazeal, $13.56 million ($735,436 in cash)
• Prologis Inc. – Edward Nekritz, $11.17 million ($3.34 million in cash)
• Kellogg Co. – Gary Pilnick, $4.60 million ($1.65 million in cash)
• The RMR Group Inc. – Jennifer Clark, $4.54 million ($3 million in cash)
• Jefferies Financial Group Inc. – Michael Sharp, $4.01 million ($4 million in cash)
• TreeHouse Foods Inc. – Thomas O’Neill, $3.89 million ($1.29 million in cash)
• Celanese Corp. – A. Lynne Puckett, $3.86 million ($953,997 in cash)
• Johnson Controls International Inc. – John Donofrio, $3.84 million ($1.67 million in cash)
• Procore Technologies Inc. – Benjamin Singer, $3.81 million ($533,757 in cash)
• Corteva Inc. – Cornel Fuerer, $3.71 million ($1.67 million in cash)
• AmerisourceBergen Corp. – John Chou, $3.51 million ($1.32 million in cash)
• Greif Inc. – Gary Martz, $3.44 million ($1.64 million in cash)
• F5 Networks Inc. – Scot Rogers, $3.35 million ($837,698 in cash)
• Dow Inc. – Amy Wilson, $3.24 million ($577,780 in cash)
• FLIR Systems Inc. – Todd DuChene, $3.22 million ($578,122 in cash); DuChene left FLIR last year to become general counsel at Core Scientific Inc. He was replaced by Sonia Galindo, who received nearly $2.71 million ($479,415 in cash) from FLIR in 2019.
• Kimberly-Clark Corp. – Jeffrey Melucci, $3.07 million ($1.41 million in cash)
• Textron Inc. – E. Robert Lupone, $2.96 million ($1.35 million in cash)
• Stanley Black & Decker Inc. – Janet Link, $2.95 million ($545,000 in cash)
• AECOM – Carla Christofferson, $2.89 million ($1.36 million in cash); Christofferson left AECOM at year’s end and joined DXC Technology Co. as chief risk officer in January.
• Dolby Laboratories Inc. – M. Andrew Sherman, $2.72 million ($748,423 in cash)
• Ciena Corp. – David Rothenstein, $2.72 million ($1.13 million in cash)
• KB Home – Brian Woram, $2.66 million ($1.75 million in cash)
• Regions Financial Corp. – Fournier “Boots” Gale III, $2.65 million ($1.74 million in cash)
• IAC/InterActiveCorp – Gregg Winiarski, $2.63 million ($500,000 in cash)
• Calpine Corp. – W. Thaddeus Miller, $2.63 million ($2.61 million in cash)
• Hologic Inc. – John Griffin, $2.62 million ($935,000 in cash)
• Sonos Inc. – Edward Lazarus, $2.54 million ($346,504 in cash)
• PTC Inc. – Aaron von Staats, $2.49 million ($375,000 in cash)
• TE Connectivity Ltd. – John Jenkins Jr., $2.47 million ($724,545 in cash)
• IQVIA Holdings Inc. – Eric Sherbet, $2.37 million ($1.07 million in cash)