Company lows boost US lawyers

The growing importance of in-house lawyers in the US has helped them weather the country's economic problems and enjoy a record year of multi-million dollar pay and bonuses, new research has found.

Ben Heineman of General Electric came top of Corporate Counsel magazine's list of the top 100 general counsel with a basic salary of $1.25 million (790,000) and a $2.23 million bonus.

He is also sitting on stock options of $32 million.

In all, 31 general counsel took home $1 million-plus through salary and bonuses in 2001, while 17 cashed in stock options of more than $1 million.

Overall, pay rose 4% on the 'halcyon year' of 2000, with the median salary across the top 100 staying roughly the same at $432,000, but with average bonuses rising $30,000 to $420,000.

While some lawyers did well through exercising options - John Finneran of Capital One Financial cashed in $15 million worth - many of those who either sold or sat on them found that their value declined because of the economic slump.

John McGoldrick of Bristol-Myers Squibb saw his options drop from $26 million to $17 million in 2001.

There was a rise in the number of women in this year's list, from seven to nine, with Owens Corning's Maura Abeln Smith the best paid at 16th, taking home $1.23 million.

The survey found that as a class, 'general counsel are getting more respect and more money; increasingly, their pay matches their company's chief financial officer's'.

And unlike other key executives, a company's poor performance is not having an effect on in-house lawyers.

The chief executive officer of Walt Disney, Michael Eisner, did not receive a bonus in 2001, but his general counsel Louis Meisinger took home a $300,000 bonus.

The survey suggested that this was because 'companies need their legal gurus more than ever'.

Coca Cola, which has been hit by a racial discrimination case which it settled for $193 million, brought in a new general counsel, prominent lawyer Deval Patrick, and paid him $1.35 million, which catapulted him into ninth place on the list.

'Blame it on Enron,' the survey said.

'But the paradox is that bad times for companies mean good times for their top counsel.'