University counsel Forum

[Prize24]

Does anyone have any insight on what it’s like to be Assistant/Associate General Counsel at a university (particularly in a generalist role)? Is the work interesting? Demanding? Any drawbacks? How good is the pay?

[Anonymous User]

Does anyone have any insight on what it’s like to be Assistant/Associate General Counsel at a university (particularly in a generalist role)? Is the work interesting? Demanding? Any drawbacks? How good is the pay?

Former biglaw coworker joined the local university as an AGC a few years back. Not a major market. I think pay is low six figures. She loves it for the work-life balance. But complains about workplace politics.

[Anonymous User]

Does anyone have any insight on what it’s like to be Assistant/Associate General Counsel at a university (particularly in a generalist role)? Is the work interesting? Demanding? Any drawbacks? How good is the pay?

Have a couple friends who work at universities. One is at a state flagship in a college town. I believe pay is in the 100-110 range. They like it and have great WLB and a pension. Another friend just left big law for a private university in a major market. Pay is a little more than other friend, but COL probably makes it less. They complain about boredom but get to basically leave and do whatever they want after like 2 pm. They also get an insane amount of vacation and holidays.

[Anonymous User]

Have more than one friend who is or has been AGC at a large state school, in a flyover state. Pay is 150K and higher, much higher, depending on experience level, so I'm amazed at the crap salary indicated in the other posts. Guess it just depends on funding level of your local university. Hours can be heavy though nothing like biglaw idiocy. You're on campus, so that's fun. Turnover is very low, which is the ultimate indicator, and also means getting an opening is rare.

[Anonymous User]

I interviewed at my alma mater, a large state university in a LCOL college town. They wanted to start me at around $150,000, which is actually a very good salary for the area. But I was an eighth year associate and couldn’t see taking a $400,000 pay cut. For reference, the actual GC of the university made less than I did as a senior associate.

[Anonymous User]

I know the lay of the land here pretty well, so I'll chime in. That being said, this is a hard conversation to have, because university general counsel offices are so varied in structure, size, and pay. For the sake of this discussion, when I say things like "typical" or "most" I'm talking about maybe the 150 largest private and public institutions in the U.S. There are something like 2,000 institutions (most without GC offices), and they typically pay below all of the ranges listed below.

Assistant General Counsel and Associate General Counsel are the positions people are most frequently hired into. Assistant General Counsel positions can be all over the place but are frequently in the $80k-$120k range at most universities. You'll have very rich institutions and/or institutions that won't hire Assistant General Counsel's without 5yrs+ of work experience pay up to $150k or so for an Assistant General Counsel. Associate General Counsel salaries are typically something like $120k-$160k. Again, rich institutions or those that require a lot of work experience may bring you in the $160k-$200k band. The promotion from Assistant General Counsel to Associate General Counsel typically takes 2-4 years and is generally pretty automatic, but you do have some random sicko institutions leaving people at Assistant General Counsel for way too long (I think Notre Dame does this...).

Senior Associate General Counsel positions are rarely hired for and typically a promotion that comes with some mixture of seniority and merit (though, many GC offices don't have this position), so the pay is typically predicated less on work experience and more on how rich your institution is. Senior Associate General Counsel positions are typically in the $160k-$200k range. The jump is typically pretty big at non-rich institutions and pretty small at rich ones, so things start to equalize.

The typical Deputy General Counsel makes in the $200k-$250k range. Some at rich institutions pull in at about $300k. General Counsel pay is frequently in the $300k-$400k with rich institutions paying more frequently in the $400k-$600k band and a few institutions paying $600k-$900k (and occasionally someone will hit a million).

You can find what most General Counsel's make by looking at a university's 990. More often than not, they'll be listed on there. Don't be surprised to see a lot of $200k-$250k General Counsel pay at very small institutions (even rich liberal arts colleges). Also note that for the purposes of the compensation ranges here, I don't include the "other compensation" in the 990s, as I'm not really sure what that includes (and I'm not invested enough to look it up), but that compensation line can frequently be $40k-$60k (sometimes you'll even see a bonkers rogue $200k).

Some universities have massive GC offices (see Ohio State) with several dozen attorneys, but it's much more frequent to have about a dozen attorneys. When we talk about non-rich institutions and small ones, they may have a GC and one other lawyer, just a GC, or no GC. Ten years ago, you could really hop into the scene and have some ambitious career growth, because GC offices were quite lean and positions were being newly created where you'd have the inside track if you were already there. Now, most institutions have created a GC/Deputy GC/Associate GC/Assistant GC hierarchy that is pretty robust (though, Johns Hopkins is just getting around to establishing a Deputy GC position, apparently), and you're starting to see more "normal" legal career trajectories (i.e., slower). It's not remotely realistic, but if you do become a GC at say a top 150 institution there is some small chance that you can become a university president at a lower tier university if you do the equivalent of "mass mailing" over several years.

Typically, the only people paid more than the university GC are the president, provost, a dean or two (on rare occasion), CFO (often called Executive Vice President), a random high profile professor or two (at certain institutions), and men's football/basketball coaching staff. All the other VPs generally make the same (or significantly less).

The work used to be a lot more generalized (and still is to some degree), but specialization increases as offices grow.

[Anonymous User]

As a data point, I know Stanford is trying to hire a 1-Yr fixed term (with a noncommittal possibility that they will keep you longer term) university counsel. They’re offering $125k for 2 years of experience, which is extremely low given the area. There’s a reason the job has been open for about half a year (they took it down and reposted it about a month ago).

[laanngo]

As a data point, I know Stanford is trying to hire a 1-Yr fixed term (with a noncommittal possibility that they will keep you longer term) university counsel. They’re offering $125k for 2 years of experience, which is extremely low given the area. There’s a reason the job has been open for about half a year (they took it down and reposted it about a month ago).

Does it come with eligibility to live in the faculty ghetto?

[gaddockteeg]

As another data point, my co worker with 16 years experience was offered a job with total comp around 425k at Stanford. So it seems like the pay certainly varies.