Law Salary Tools
How to offer appropriate lawyer salaries
Attorney salaries rank among the highest in all professions. As a firm owner or human resources professional, it's your job to make sure you're getting what you pay for. But you also want to provide a fair and competitive wage to keep competent attorneys on staff.Setting specific salary guidelines and performance benchmarks requires a lot of planning and research. The ultimate goal should be coming up with a compensation plan that boosts productivity but also fits in with your bottom line.
A number of factors go into determining salary of a lawyer, including:
1. Law salary depends heavily on location. A lawyer in a small Midwest city isn't going to expect as much in salary as a lawyer working in a major coastal metropolis.
2. The area of law expertise or the particular position within the firm can sway salary. Corporate law salaries are usually the highest.
3. Legal salaries are lower at a smaller firm or one that is set up as a non-profit.
4. Salary of a lawyer will also depend upon years of experience.
Research legal salaries
Quite a bit of lawyer salary survey information can be found online. That information can help you determine what salaries are appropriate and develop compensation policies.
Try: Mercer's ePrism and Mercer PayMonitor tools may prove to be helpful. Or check out Vault for law salary information. You must, however, sign up for a gold membership to access full details.
Educate yourself on lawyer salary information by attending a webinar
Standards in salaries change constantly. Keeping informed on trends in the human resources and management fields can prove to be beneficial. Depending on your position, attending a webinar could also count as continuing education hours.
Try: The Economic Research Institute's distance learning center offers a variety of human resources courses for free. For a fee, various salary management webinars are available from WorldatWork.
Consider purchasing software to help with setting lawyer salaries
A number of software companies offer compensation packages to help out with the task. Make sure you review all of the functions before you purchase, as some may not apply specifically to the law field. If anything, you may find the software good as a guide.
Try: Order a free trial, schedule a demo or get a product tour of Halogen Software's eCompensation software package. Or check out LaserBeam Software for its LaserComp 4.0 software. View a slide show about the software and see what the application looks like.
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