Stock awards reshape rankings of top-paid female general counsels
Corporate Counsel’s 2026 GC Compensation Survey has placed three women among the 10 highest-paid legal chiefs overall. (Image from Shutterstock)
Corporate Counsel’s 2026 GC Compensation Survey has placed three women among the 10 highest-paid legal chiefs overall.
Kate Adams, the general counsel at Apple, ranked fifth; Priya Aiyar, the general counsel at Discovery, ranked eighth; and Kathryn Ruemmler, the general counsel at the Goldman Sachs Group, ranked ninth—with total compensation of $27.03 million, $23.26 million and $22.29 million, respectively.
Adams had $22.01 million in stock awards; Aiyar had $17.73 million in stock awards; Ruemmler had about $12 million in stock awards.
But when the executives are reordered by cash compensation, Ruemmler led female legal chiefs, with $9.96 million in cash compensation, including a $1.5 million salary and an $8.46 million bonus. Ellen Patterson, the general counsel at Wells Fargo, came in second, with $5.55 million, followed by Adams, at $5 million, according to a story by Law.com.
The rankings are compiled by Law.com Intelligence and include all Fortune 1000 legal chiefs who rank among their company’s five highest-paid executives.
The rankings reinforce a compensation shift depicted in other studies of the in-house market, with salary and annual bonuses failing to reveal the full compensation package for high-ranking general counsel positions. Recently, equity awards have become the most important factor in executive pay packages, according to Law.com.
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