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Different at every firm and for every counsel. My understanding from my experience at a couple law firms (not as counsel role):
Counsel salary is a little more than associate salary, but probably not much more. I don’t think it’s lockstep anymore, idea is you’ve maxed out the associate payscale and you’re now hovering just above that. Yes, they have hours requirements but they often negotiate to be at 80% etc (with a comparable paycut) if they want a more lifestyle job.
Keep in mind these jobs are v difficult to get - most firms have associates who they want to see make partner or move on to something else away from the firm. Firms don’t want to keep paying someone at the very expensive top of the associate payscale indefinitely if they’re never going to bring in business, and they’re not much better than a senior associate on partner track. Firms are only going to make an associate counsel if that associate has some specialized skills they don’t want to lose/the sub field is just so busy that they want a senior specialist even if they never make partner and start bringing in business.
Agree completely with the first two paragraphs of the prior post. My comp is just a tad above 8th year associate (both salary and bonus). My experience w/r/t the third paragraph is different. My practice is not specialized whatsoever and I had no problem making counsel. Worth mentioning that I specifically chose counsel track for quality-of-life reasons and could’ve made partner if I wanted to (highest reviews in my practice group when I was an associate, etc.). If you’re overqualified for the job, then your firm will be happy to keep you as counsel. If making counsel is a stretch, then perhaps the first responder is correct, but I am not certain.
Forgot to mention: bonus does go up if you exceed your hours. In my case, I believe 15k per 100 hours over target. But there’s no point in exceeding hours: if you’re going to bill a lot, might as well be partner. The whole point in counsel is to work less and have a better quality of life, otherwise there’s no benefit to the role.
1850 for counsels and 1950 for associates in my form so slightly lower.