The $30 Million Lawyer: GCs Take on New Duties to Up Their Pay
The best paid legal executives at the biggest public companies increasingly have something in common, even beyond total compensation that can top $30 million: They wear many hats.
Walker is followed by
“Hybrid roles are not only more common but are fast becoming the new model for leadership in complex public companies, especially in industries facing intense regulatory and strategic demands,” said Eskor Edem, a managing director with the in-house counsel recruiting team at legal search and advisory firm Major, Lindsey & Africa.
Rounding out the highest paid ranks of senior lawyers with broad portfolios are
“Senior corporate lawyers are increasingly expected to operate as enterprise-wide executives,” Edem noted, “blending legal expertise with broader governance and strategy responsibilities.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission requires public companies to report the annual total compensation for their CEOs, chief financial officers, and at least three other executives who receive the highest pay. A senior lawyer was listed among those top-paid officials in more than half of the S&P 500 companies’ most recent filings through Sept. 26.
An analysis based on those disclosures to the SEC and actual job duties among company officers found that nearly all of the 13 legal leaders whose pay packages were valued at more than $15 million had hybrid roles. The sole exception:
“This evolution reflects the environment companies face today: geopolitical uncertainty, complex regulation, and the new realities of franchise and reputational risk driven by social media scrutiny,” said Victoria Reese, a partner at executive search and consulting firm Heidrick & Struggles International Inc.
While some hybrid legal officers don’t oversee day-to-day law department operations—Microsoft, United, and other companies have separate in-house lawyers who may do so by carrying the chief legal officer or general counsel title—they still had legal responsibilities within the C-suite functions they oversee.
“Boards and CEOs want leaders with the judgment to anticipate risk and business strategy,” said Reese, who noted top paid corporate legal executives can increasingly be found at the intersection of law, strategy, and reputation.
Edem and his colleague Jerry Temko found that in-house lawyers with expanded responsibilities have risen from about 13% in 2022 to 20% in 2025 within the Fortune 500. Expanding their scope to Fortune 1000 companies, they found 70% of senior lawyers now manage at least two other functions beyond a legal team.
“These figures indicate a steady shift that is also visible within the S&P 500 cohort of the highest paid legal leaders,” said Temko, a former legal chief himself and now a managing director at Major, Lindsey & Africa. Industries where regulation and strategy are “tightly intertwined,” such as finance, insurance, energy, health care, and technology, he said, had most of the hybrid legal roles.
Big Money Makers
United’s Hart is a former general counsel now in an operational job that includes corporate communications, flight safety, and legal, government, and regulatory affairs. The airline confirmed that its legal chief, Robert Rivkin, reports to Hart.
Microsoft’s Smith, whose compensation has risen each of the past three years, is another former general counsel who in his current role as president and vice chair leads the company’s corporate, external, and legal affairs department.
Amazon rewards executives like its longtime top lawyer Zapolsky with big biannual pay packages bolstered by long-term equity awards. Zapolsky oversees legal, compliance, policy, and regulatory affairs, although he offloaded some duties last year to another senior Amazon attorney.
These executives have all proved “their ability to add value beyond the original legal remit” many had at their employers, Reese said.
Compensation Calculus
Total compensation reported to the SEC is rarely, if ever, executives’ take-home pay. Compensation packages disclosed in annual proxy statements and other filings often include substantial stock awards, which vest over a multiyear period and can fluctuate based on the value of a company’s shares.
Alphabet’s legal chief Walker, for example, had stock holdings last year valued at more than $27.1 million, nearly 90% of his total compensation. Walker received only about $3 million in cash, including $1 million in base salary.
But stock earnings are imperfect estimates, said Ani Huang, CEO of the Center On Executive Compensation, which has urged the SEC to revamp pay reporting.
The median pay package for S&P 500 legal leaders in Bloomberg Law’s analysis is about $4.2 million. The sum exceeds the more than $3 million average profit per equity partner at the largest US law firms by gross revenue in 2024, according to The American Lawyer.
Expanded executive responsibilities significantly increases total compensation for legal executives, usually through greater “equity components,” said John Gilmore, a co-founder of legal search firm BarkerGilmore LLC, which recently released its own study of legal chief compensation.
Title Talk
Duane Morris LLP partner John Nixon, an executive compensation expert who counsels clients in negotiating their pay packages, advises first-time legal leaders to seek out the chief legal officer designation—not general counsel—to protect against another lawyer coming in above them in the corporate hierarchy.
Nixon said the chief legal officer title also gives flexibility to senior lawyers looking to expand their mandate by overseeing other enterprise functions.
“While the designation ‘chief’ isn’t necessarily required, it does create a parallel identifier within the executive leadership team that allows the CEO to ‘plug and play’ with function designation,” Nixon said.
At a time when the number of corporate counsel are growing faster than those in private practice or public service, a well-crafted title can pay for itself by putting an individual in an elite tier of legal talent.
“There is a reason that certain names are circulated when a major opportunity becomes available,” Nixon said. Once a desirable title is obtained, it elevates the profile of a particular attorney, who might go from being a general counsel to a senior executive, and perhaps even one day, chief executive, he said.
Note on methodology: Bloomberg Law reviewed S&P 500 pay packages disclosed in filings to the SEC and collected by the Bloomberg Terminal as of Sept. 26. The SEC requires a public company to report annual total compensation for its CEO, chief financial officer, and as many as five other executive officers with the highest pay, three of whom must be at the firm at the end of its most recent fiscal year.
These public disclosures provide the most extensive data on corporate legal leaders’ compensation, but are still incomplete. If a legal leader wasn’t among a company’s top paid executives during its most recent fiscal year, their pay wasn’t disclosed and didn’t make Bloomberg Law’s data set. Therefore notable attorneys such as Meta Platforms Inc.’s Jennifer Newstead and Salesforce Inc.’s Sabastian Niles weren’t included despite earning sizable sums the past few years.
C-suite lawyers who no longer have an active hand in legal affairs weren’t included.
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