Top-paid general counsel earned $10.9M in 2012, survey says
The top in-house lawyer at General Electric was the highest-paid general counsel in the U.S. last year, earning a total of $10.9 million in cash compensation.
Brackett Denniston III also exercised another $2 million or so in stock options, explains a Corporate Counsel article reporting on the magazine’s annual salary survey.
His base salary of $1.6 million, also the highest among those surveyed, was augmented by bonuses reflecting his contributions overseeing major litigation, protecting the company’s intellectual property and data and enhancing corporate compliance, among other achievements.
Attorneys in charge of the in-house legal departments at CBS, the Bank of America, Time Warner and Walt Disney followed Denniston on the Corporate Counsel list of general counsels with the sweetest compensation deals in 2012.
Meanwhile, average cash compensation among those surveyed rose nearly 7 percent to an all-time high of $1,853,671, the article says.
