A new report surveys more than 750 in-house lawyers about their compensation
While many in-house lawyers across Canada believe their compensation is reasonable, an even larger number said they would consider leaving their current roles if another position promised higher pay, according to a new survey of in-house counsel released Tuesday.
Seventy percent of the lawyers surveyed in the 2025 Canadian In-House Lawyer Salary Report said they received reasonable pay. However, 40 percent of respondents said they would definitely leave their company for a higher-paying role, while another 52 percent said they would possibly do the same.
Only 8 percent of respondents said they would stay in their current roles even if a better-paying role emerged.
Avi Weiss, founder of the in-house professional development community Counselwell, said the finding demonstrates how strongly compensation impacts job satisfaction for in-house lawyers.
“There’s been a lot of talk about non-salary perks that employers can leverage to attract and retain talent, and all of those perks are great, and we should continue offering them,” Weiss told Canadian Lawyer on Tuesday. “But ultimately, I think what people are going to care about the most is… their total compensation.
“That’s the number one driver, in my opinion,” he adds.
Jointly published by Counselwell and recruitment firm ZSA Legal Recruitment, Tuesday’s report surveyed 759 in-house lawyers throughout the fourth quarter of 2024.
The report aims to garner insights into in-house compensation for lawyers and the legal departments and organizations hiring them. Respondents span different experience levels, genders, and roles and work at government, non-profit, public, and private organizations across different provinces.
In the provinces for which Counselwell and ZSA had the most data – Ontario, Alberta, BC, and Quebec – in-house compensation generally increased compared to the previous year. In Ontario, the median base salary for in-house counsel in the 2025 report was $185,000, up from $171,000 in the 2024 report.
The median base salary in Alberta was $175,000, up from $152,000 the previous year. Quebec’s median base salary was $156,000, up from $145,000.
The exception was BC, where in-house lawyers’ median base salary fell to $191,000 from $200,000 the previous year. However, Weiss says the decrease may not indicate a province-wide trend since only a small proportion of survey respondents – 53 out of 759 – hail from BC.
The report also lent insight into pay trends amongst junior lawyers. Overall, lawyers who worked on-site earned a higher base salary on average ($211,451) than colleagues who worked remotely ($177,437) or on hybrid schedules ($191,887).
However, this trend did not hold true for lawyers who were admitted to the bar after 2020. These lawyers earned more on average when they worked remotely ($155,045) or on a hybrid schedule ($169,099) than when they worked on-site ($129,643).
Pay information submitted by junior lawyers also revealed a 3 percent pay discrepancy between male and female lawyers, with men earning more than women. In comparison, in-house lawyers overall reported a gender pay discrepancy of 8 percent – a decrease from 12 percent the previous year.
Weiss says the pay discrepancy figures for junior lawyers, in particular, suggest that women just starting in their legal careers are seeing less pay discrimination than their senior counterparts, “which to me says the industry is changing for the better.”
However, he was more circumspect about drawing definite conclusions about why junior lawyers were making more money from remote and hybrid work than their colleagues who work fully on-site. One possibility is that industries that lend themselves to remote or hybrid models happen to pay more on average, he says.
