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Lady lawyers don’t object!
The gender pay gap is dead in one very elite circle — among women general counsel at large law firms.
Women attorneys serving as the chief in-house lawyer for big public firms made 16% more than their male counterparts last year, according to a new study.
The high-ranking lady lawyers earned an average package of nearly $3 million annually — with a median salary of $672,000 and equity worth $2.3 million in 2025, according to Equilar, a data-driven corporate benchmark firm.
By contrast, men in the same high-paid positions took home an average of $657,000 in salary and $1.9 million in equity, according to the report, which analyzed a group of the biggest publicly traded companies.
Women general counsel earned more because they tended to be more successful negotiating stock awards, according to researchers.
“It’s not the base salaries, not the cash bonus, those are all pretty standard,”said John Gilmore, co-founder of executive search firm BarkerGilmore, which partnered with Equilar on the study. “It’s that the women are getting higher equity.”
The phenomenon is in stark contrast to the majority of the US workforce, where women earn about 20% less than men — a gap that has largely remained the same for a decade.
Overall, female general counsels’ earnings nearly doubled from a 8.5% premium the year before, according to the study.
Men at large law firms, meanwhile, out-earned female CFO and COOs, as well as among named executive officers overall.
Male legal executives overall earned more than women in the five highest-paid roles at the companies, the study found.
