America’s largest law firms may be
handsomely paying partners, but these sums are dwarfed by the total compensation of top-earning corporate counsel in the country.
Bloomberg Law has
released a list of the 30 highest-paid general counsel in America in 2016, showing large corporates in the country are paying top lawyers top dollar.
The top 10 alone earned US$116.4m last year, while the whole group earned more than US$240m. An in-house lawyer needs to earn at least US$8.4m to enter the top 10, and more than US$5m to enter the top 30.
Bloomberg Law does say, however, that it only looked at the proxy reports for the 500 largest US companies by revenue, recording total compensation if a lawyer appeared on a report’s compensation table, which usually show compensation for the CEO and the CFO, and the next three highest-paid executives. It also said that while everyone on the list is a lawyer, some of them also have responsibilities that go beyond what a normal GC would have.
The top earner for a second straight year is Apple’s Bruce Sewell, whose total compensation last year was US$22.81m. Next is Time Warner’s Paul Cappuccio, with a total compensation of US$16.27m. At third is Altria Group’s Denise Keane, who earned a total of US$11.6m.
A curious case in this year’s list is Avrohom Kess, who joined Travelers Insurance in December from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. His salary last year was listed as US$3,257, but due to other compensation, bonuses, and stock awards and options given by the company to lure him from BigLaw to in-house practice, his total compensation ballooned to US$8.71m, earning him the seventh spot in the list. This also demonstrates how other compensation makes up the bulk of these lawyers’ total compensation.
America’s top 10 highest-paid GCs in 2016 are:
- Bruce Sewell
Apple
Total compensation: US$22.81m
Salary: US$1m
- Paul Cappuccio
Time Warner
Total compensation: US$16.27m
Salary: US$1.4m
- Denise Keane
Altria Group
Total compensation: US$11.59m
Salary: US$938,500
- Alan Braverman
Walt Disney
Total compensation: US$11.12m
Salary: US$1.55m
- Thomas Sabatino
Aetna
Total compensation: US$10.99m
Salary: US$502,874
- J. Michael Luttig
Boeing
Total compensation: US$9.37m
Salary: US$903,673
- Avrohom Kess
Travelers Insurance
Total compensation: US$8.71m
Salary: US$3,257
- Bradford Smith
Microsoft
Total compensation: US$8.61m
Salary: US$704,167
- Lawrence Tu
CBS
Total compensation: US$8.57m
Salary: US$1.2m
- Laureen Seeger
American Express
Total compensation: US$8.39m
Salary: US$800,000
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