Attorney compensation benchmarking
Law firm compensation benchmarking against the firms you actually compete with
What associates, counsel and partners are paid in your markets, by practice and seniority, measured against the peer set you lose lawyers to. Built from current market evidence, not last year's survey.
The problem
A single "market rate" hides three different markets
The salary a firm sees quoted as "market" usually blends national-scale firms, strong regional firms and boutiques into one figure. Those are different labor markets. A mid-level litigator at a regional insurance defense practice and one at a national firm in the same city are not priced off the same number, and a benchmark that mixes them is wrong for both.
Posted salary ranges add a second distortion. Firms mostly publish ranges where pay-transparency laws require them, and in states without such a law the firms that choose to post are often national firms, so posted ranges can read higher than the local market. Most comp decisions are still made off a survey, a recruiter's anecdote or the last lateral who left.
What we do
How we work on it
Associate and counsel pay benchmarks
Pay by class year or experience band, practice and city, against a peer set we agree with you up front. Base and bonus separated, with the spread, not just a midpoint.
Lateral offer and counteroffer pricing
When a candidate or a departing lawyer puts a number on the table, we tell you where it sits in the current market and what the competing offer most likely looks like.
Partner and practice-group positioning
How your partner and counsel compensation structure compares with the firms recruiting your people, and which practices are most exposed to being outbid.
Pay-transparency readiness
For firms posting in states that require a range: what ranges your peers publish for the same seats, and how to set yours without anchoring candidates or existing associates in the wrong place.
Deliverable
What a benchmark covers
Your peer set
Firms defined by who you compete with for hires and clients, not by revenue rank alone.
Seniority bands
Junior, mid-level and senior associate bands, plus counsel, mapped to how your firm actually levels.
Practice splits
Transactional, litigation and specialty practices priced separately where the market prices them separately.
Market by city
Your offices, plus the cities your lawyers are most likely to be recruited to.
Where you sit
Your current scale placed against the range, seat by seat, with the gaps that carry retention risk.
A working session
We walk your comp committee or leadership through the findings and the options, not just hand over a deck.
Who we work with
Law firm leadership and comp committees
Setting or resetting associate scales, bonus pools and counsel pay, and want a defensible market view.
Firm HR and recruiting teams
Pricing lateral offers and answering "is our offer competitive?" with evidence instead of a guess.
In-house legal departments
Benchmarking attorney roles against the law firm market they hire out of.
MSO platforms and investors
Comparing pay across a platform's firms and against each firm's local market. See our private equity work.
Why us
Market evidence from people who hire lawyers for a living
We track law firm hiring and posted pay across U.S. markets continuously, because that is how we recruit. A benchmark from us reflects what firms are offering this quarter, read by people who negotiate attorney offers for a living.
Our sister firm, Voll Recruiting, places attorneys at law firms across the country, so we see what lawyers are offered, why they move and how long seats take to fill, every week. See how we work and where our data comes from.
FAQ
Questions
How is this different from a salary survey?
Surveys report what participating firms say they paid, usually months after the fact, across whatever firms chose to respond. We build the peer set around your firm and use current market evidence: posted ranges, firm-level hiring activity and what our recruiting desk sees in live offers.
Do you cover partner compensation?
We cover how partner and counsel pay structures compare across the firms competing for your people, and which partners and practices the market is most likely to target. Individual partner pay is private and we do not publish or trade in it.
Can you benchmark a single offer quickly?
Yes. A single-seat check (one role, one city) is a short, fixed-fee engagement, usually turned around within a few business days.
Do posted salary ranges reflect what lawyers are actually paid?
Not exactly. A posted range is what a firm advertises, often wide, and published mostly where the law requires it. We use posted ranges as one input, separate them by firm type and state, and say plainly where they are likely to run high or low.
How are engagements priced?
Benchmarks are fixed-fee, scoped to the number of offices, practices and seniority bands, and agreed before any work starts. Annual refreshes are available.
Resetting your scale or pricing a hard offer?
Tell us the offices, practices and seniority levels. Thirty minutes is enough to scope it.