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I'll be interning at the IP department of a large company (50-70,000 employees, 15-30 billion dollar company).

Law firm salaries are transparent and posted on the web...in-house salaries are a little less obvious and are unavailable for this company. In what range would a patent attorney at a company like this start out at?

Do you know if your company hires right out of law school. Almost none do... From what I understand (I interned in-house at a large company last summer) the starting salary is likely to be less than big-law in a comparable area but probably still six figures.

I don't want to out myself, but the company does hire right out of law school, but not everyone. Their goal for the position is to find someone they can keep, but it doesn't necessarily mean they will keep me. Regardless, my question pertains to the salary. In terms of the market, the place is a 30-60 minutes outside a NYC/Boston/SF/DC market.

Anonymous User wrote:I don't want to out myself, but the firm does hire right out of law school, but not everyone. Their goal for the position is to find someone they can keep, but it doesn't necessarily mean they will keep me. Regardless, my question pertains to the salary. In terms of the market, the place is a 30-60 minutes outside a NYC/Boston/SF/DC market.

HP is one of the few companies that has a formal hiring program out of law school. You can search on this board, but I remember it being a starting salary of around 115,000 (regardless of location - Palo Alto, Dallas, or Houston) with a few other perks/benefits. Since there isn't a "formal" hiring market for law students going in-house, each company that does hire may offer widely varying salaries.
I was in-house at a non-IP company and they paid just over $100,000 to new attorneys.

The Robert Half legal salary guide says for people with 0-3 years experience the average ranges from 118-151k. I'm not sure if that's a 25/75 breakdown or what.

http://www.roberthalf.com/salary-guides

I graduated in '12 and started in-house at a large technology company. I make around 80k, fwiw.

Tiago Splitter wrote:The Robert Half legal salary guide says for people with 0-3 years experience the average ranges from 118-151k. I'm not sure if that's a 25/75 breakdown or what.

http://www.roberthalf.com/salary-guides

That sounds about right. At my company (financial services), we don't normally hire without law firm experience, but our junior lawyers (most of whom have more than 3 years' exp.) start out at the higher end of that range--before bonuses.

I started at a financial services company right out of law school -- my salary is at $120k plus bonus.

Anonymous User wrote:I started at a financial services company right out of law school -- my salary is at $120k plus bonus.

Would you mind messaging me? I'm interested in financial services companies.