---
title: "Public Company General Counsel"
description: "The top lawyer at a publicly traded company, leading its legal department and advising the CEO and board on legal and governance risk."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/public-company-general-counsel"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Public Company General Counsel

**Category:** Legal · **SOC code:** 23-1011 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 23-1011.00

The top lawyer at a publicly traded company, leading its legal department and advising the CEO and board on legal and governance risk.

Also advertised as: Chief Legal Officer; General Counsel and Corporate Secretary; EVP and General Counsel; Corporate General Counsel.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $159,670 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $76.76/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $78,360 to $351,600, with the middle half between $102,990 and $221,370
- **Total US employment:** 754,500
- **Typical entry education:** Doctorate
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +4.7% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 28,700 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 28/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 754,500 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $78,360 |
| 25th | $102,990 |
| 50th (median) | $159,670 |
| 75th | $221,370 |
| 90th | $351,600 |
| Mean (average) | $185,840 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NY | $207,860 | $192,604 | 91,870 |
| DC | $195,190 | $177,605 | 33,070 |
| CA | $195,080 | $176,192 | 95,770 |
| MA | $176,680 | $167,062 | 23,560 |
| DE | $173,510 | $173,844 | 2,920 |
| CO | $168,520 | $163,529 | 16,720 |
| VA | $167,210 | $165,384 | 18,580 |
| CT | $163,600 | $157,900 | 8,420 |
| NJ | $161,430 | $148,366 | 23,160 |
| IL | $160,800 | $160,868 | 33,590 |
| PA | $157,180 | $161,091 | 27,170 |
| MN | $155,140 | $157,309 | 12,380 |
| TX | $154,200 | $158,876 | 56,580 |
| WA | $154,130 | $144,029 | 12,770 |
| NV | $150,510 | $150,542 | 6,490 |

38 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 53 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/public-company-general-counsel/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/public-company-general-counsel.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 863,700 in the 2025–2035 base year to 904,300 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 40,600 jobs, or +4.7%. Faster than average: 4.7% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 28,700 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Doctoral or professional degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Doctoral Degree | 77.2% |
| First Professional Degree | 22.8% |

## What the work involves

- Advise the CEO, executive team and board on legal, regulatory and governance matters
- Oversee SEC filings, proxy statements and disclosure controls with the finance team
- Lead the in-house legal department and set its budget and priorities
- Select and manage outside law firms for major litigation and transactions
- Direct responses to government investigations and enforcement actions
- Guide the legal side of mergers, acquisitions and financings
- Run board and shareholder meetings as corporate secretary
- Set compliance, ethics and risk policies across the company

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Speaking — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Complex Problem Solving — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Law and Government — importance 5.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administrative — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Communications and Media — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 4.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Enterprising (E), Investigative (I), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| E — Enterprising | 5.66 |
| I — Investigative | 4.69 |
| C — Conventional | 4.65 |
| S — Social | 3.48 |
| A — Artistic | 2.40 |
| R — Realistic | 1.12 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ENTJ | 71.4 |
| ESTJ | 65.2 |
| ENFJ | 64.8 |
| ESFJ | 61.8 |
| INTJ | 54.1 |

Best-fitting types: ENTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Lawyer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/lawyer) — median $159,670
- [Judicial Law Clerk](https://nuecareer.com/careers/judicial-law-clerk) — median $64,920
- [Administrative Law Judge, Adjudicator, and Hearing Officer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/administrative-law-judge-adjudicator-and-hearing-officer) — median $117,860
- [Judge](https://nuecareer.com/careers/judge) — median $153,990
- [Arbitrator, Mediator, and Conciliator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/arbitrator-mediator-and-conciliator) — median $75,530
- [Equal Opportunity Representative and Officer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/equal-opportunity-representative-and-officer) — median $80,730
- [Claims Adjuster, Examiner, and Investigator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/claims-adjuster-examiner-and-investigator) — median $78,000
- [Law Teacher, Postsecondary](https://nuecareer.com/careers/law-teacher-postsecondary) — median $128,500
- [Labor Relations Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/labor-relations-specialist) — median $95,420
- [Fraud Examiner, Investigator and Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/fraud-examiner-investigator-and-analyst) — median $81,100

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/public-company-general-counsel