How to hire an associate counsel

How to hire an associate counsel, step by step

Here's a step-by-step associate counsel hiring guide:

• Step 1: Identify your hiring needs
• Step 2: Create an ideal candidate profile
• Step 3: Make a budget
• Step 4: Write an associate counsel job description
• Step 5: Post your job
• Step 6: Interview candidates
• Step 7: Send a job offer and onboard your new associate counsel
• Step 8: Go through the hiring process checklist

What does an associate counsel do?

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1. Identify your hiring needs

   The associate counsel hiring process starts by determining what type of worker you actually need. Certain roles might require a full-time employee, whereas part-time workers or contractors can do others.

   Determine employee vs contractor status

   Is the person you're thinking of hiring a US citizen or green card holder?

   Yes

   No

   An associate counsel's background is also an important factor in determining whether they'll be a good fit for the position. For example, associate counsels from different industries or fields will have radically different experiences and will bring different viewpoints to the role. You also need to consider the candidate's previous level of experience to make sure they'll be comfortable with the job's level of seniority.

   The following list breaks down different types of associate counsels and their corresponding salaries.

   Type of Associate Counsel	Description	Hourly rate
   Associate Counsel	Lawyers advise and represent individuals, businesses, and government agencies on legal issues and disputes.	$45-97
   Lawyer	A lawyer is a legal practitioner who specializes in understanding and interpreting laws and other legal matters. Their responsibilities revolve around providing legal counseling and advice, representing clients in different kinds of court proceedings, conducting research, collecting evidence, and coordinating with various experts... Show more	$30-100
   Attorney At Law	An Attorney at Law is responsible for preparing and examining contracts involving leases, licenses, purchases, sales, etc. They advise clients concerning business transactions, claim liability, or legal rights and obligations.	$33-79

   Show more

2. Create an ideal candidate profile

   Common skills:

   • Legal Issues
   • Litigation
   • Legal Advice
   • Intellectual Property
   • Substance Abuse
   • Legal Research
   • Legal Support
   • Veterans
   • In-House Counsel
   • Mental Health
   • Patients
   • Due Diligence
   • Legal Services
   • HIPAA

   Check all skills

   Responsibilities:

   • First-Chair arbitration hearings and achieve favorable awards.
   • Develop and implement an agency-wide client privacy policy and manage agency response to all matters involving subpoenas and warrants.
   • Assist in liaising with insurance authorities, responding to regulatory inquiries and managing relationship with region from legal and business perspective.
   • Update policies and standard operating procedures to conform to HIPAA, EEOC, FDA, and state pharmacy board guidelines.
   • Assist in high-profile litigation matters involving questions of complex constitutional, federal and state law, including intellectual property disputes.
   • Respond to file requests from other DHS agencies, including FOIA requests.

   More associate counsel duties

3. Make a budget

   Including a salary range in the associate counsel job description is a good way to get more applicants. An associate counsel salary can be affected by several factors, such as the location of the job, the level of experience, education, certifications, and the employer's prestige.

   For example, the average salary for an associate counsel in Hawaii may be lower than in California, and an entry-level engineer typically earns less than a senior-level associate counsel. Additionally, an associate counsel with lots of experience in the field may command a higher salary as a result.

   Average associate counsel salary

   $139,766yearly

   $67.20 hourly rate

   ---

   Entry-level associate counsel salary

   $95,000 yearly salary

   Updated January 23, 2026

   Average associate counsel salary by state

   Rank	State	Avg. salary	Hourly rate
   1	District of Columbia	$169,534	$82
   2	California	$168,722	$81
   3	New York	$148,594	$71
   4	Virginia	$142,560	$69
   5	Massachusetts	$136,749	$66
   6	Georgia	$135,671	$65
   7	Colorado	$127,932	$62
   8	New Jersey	$126,170	$61
   9	Washington	$124,888	$60
   10	Minnesota	$124,788	$60
   11	Texas	$119,748	$58
   12	Illinois	$119,110	$57
   13	Oregon	$115,798	$56
   14	Nebraska	$112,443	$54
   15	Pennsylvania	$110,194	$53
   16	Missouri	$108,213	$52
   17	Maryland	$108,211	$52
   18	North Carolina	$106,785	$51
   19	Florida	$99,872	$48

   Average associate counsel salary by company

   Company

   Rank	Company	Average salary	Hourly rate	Job openings
   1	Seyfarth Shaw	$206,934	$99.49
   2	Twitter	$193,091	$92.83
   3	Google	$189,373	$91.04	32
   4	Amazon	$179,822	$86.45	82
   5	VMware	$179,279	$86.19
   6	Santa Rosa High School	$177,328	$85.25
   7	Atlassian	$177,200	$85.19
   8	Kaiser Permanente	$173,528	$83.43
   9	Valero Energy	$171,606	$82.50
   10	JPMorgan Chase & Co.	$163,811	$78.76	43
   11	Credit Karma	$163,794	$78.75
   12	Integral Ad Science	$162,319	$78.04
   13	Coinbase	$159,162	$76.52
   14	Chime	$158,754	$76.32
   15	AIG	$158,300	$76.11	20
   16	Darden Restaurants	$157,859	$75.89
   17	D.R. Horton	$157,578	$75.76	4
   18	Estée Lauder	$157,126	$75.54	7
   19	Denbury Resources	$157,008	$75.48
   20	Zebra Technologies	$156,295	$75.14

4. Writing an associate counsel job description

   An associate counsel job description should include a summary of the role, required skills, and a list of responsibilities. It's also good to include a salary range and the first name of the hiring manager. Below, you can find an example of an associate counsel job description:

   Associate counsel job description example

   The work we do has an impact on millions of lives, and you can be a part of it.
   We help protect our customers against life's uncertainties. Regardless of where you work within the company, you'll be helping provide protection and peace of mind when our customers need it most.
   
   Each year, Protective conducts business with hundreds of third parties to support and sustain our business operations. The Associate Counsel works with internal relationship owners, third party representatives, and other stakeholders to ensure acceptable levels of risk and performance are achieved in the commercial contracts for products or services.
   Responsible for supporting commercial engagements including the following departments: Accounting, Marketing, Innovation, Actuarial, New Business, Operations, Vendor Management, Internal Audit, APD, Corporate Communication, Underwriting and Human Resources to ensure Protective achieves the desired outcomes throughout the contracting process.
   Responsibilities: Reviewing, drafting and negotiating legal terms in a broad range of commercial contracts, such as software licenses, statements of work, letter agreements, master service agreements, amendments, change orders, renewals, NDAs and service level agreements. Providing legal advice and counsel to businesses to ensure that commercial engagements accomplish business goals while mitigating risk exposure and in collaboration with internal subject matter experts e.g. Vendor Management, Information Security, Compliance and Enterprise Risk Management. Ensuring commercial contracts have proper legal protections for Protective, such as appropriate liability limitations, IT security, confidential information protection, transition assistance, regulatory compliance, indemnification, service level credits and liability limits. Providing legal advice and counsel to IT Security and Compliance in handling data security audit requests from distributors and vendors. Staying informed of regulatory and industry practices related to third party risk and performance management. Actively works with stakeholders to identify and implement ideas to improve processes, procedures, and technology.
   Qualifications:Juris Doctorate from accredited law school Three or more years of experience in corporate, banking or insurance legal practice Experience drafting and negotiating vendor agreements Strong interpersonal, collaboration and legal counseling skills.Advanced oral and written communication skills.Strong evidence of experience in working across organizational lines. Self-starter with the ability to work independently. Analytical/critical thinker with the ability to make decisions. Strong organizational skills.Strong document management skills, including experience with Microsoft applications.
   Protective's targeted salary range for this position is $70,000 to $90,000. Actual salaries may vary depending on factors, including but not limited to, job location, skills, and experience. The range listed is just one component of Protective's total compensation package for employees.
   
   This position also offers additional incentive opportunities through an annual incentive based on individual and Company performance.
   
   Employee Benefits:
   We aim to protect our employees' wellbeing through a broad benefits offering. For example, we protect physical wellbeing through health, dental and vision insurance. We protect mental wellbeing through mental health benefits and an employee assistance program. We protect time away from work with a variety of paid time away benefits (e.g., paid time off, paid parental leave, short-term disability, and a cultural observance day). We protect financial wellbeing through contributions to healthcare accounts, a pension plan, and a 401(k) plan with Company matching. All employees are encouraged to protect their overall wellbeing by engaging in ProHealth Rewards, Protective's platform to improve wellbeing while earning cash rewards.
   
   Eligibility for certain benefits may vary by position in accordance with the terms of the Company's benefit plans.
   
   Diversity and Inclusion:
   At Protective, we are committed to providing an inclusive culture where all employees are able to fully contribute and thrive. Our goal is to grow and develop our people, attract diverse talent and support strong, diverse communities.
   
   We support diversity, equity, and inclusion by working to develop a culture of inclusion and belonging led by leaders who develop potential and embrace unique skills and abilities. Our aim is to create an equitable and accountable environment for all leaders and employees that will drive performance and impact business strategy. In this way, we can increase overall diversity for leadership roles and pipelines of talent by maturing our hiring practices, robust development opportunities and focus on retention of key talent.
   
   We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer committed to being inclusive and attracting, retaining, and growing the talents of a diverse and inclusive workforce.

   Copy this example

   

5. Post your job

   To find the right associate counsel for your business, consider trying out a few different recruiting strategies:

   • Consider internal talent. One of the most important sources of talent for any company is its existing workforce.
   • Ask for referrals. Reach out to friends, family members, and current employees and ask if they know or have worked with associate counsels they would recommend.
   • Recruit at local colleges. Attend job fairs at local colleges to recruit associate counsels who meet your education requirements.
   • Social media platforms. LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter now have more than 3.5 billion users, and you can use social media to reach potential job candidates.

   Post your job online:

   • Post your associate counsel job on Zippia to find and recruit associate counsel candidates who meet your exact specifications.
   • Use field-specific websites.
   • Post a job on free websites.

6. Interview candidates

   Recruiting associate counsels requires you to bring your A-game to the interview process. The first interview should introduce the company and the role to the candidate as much as they present their background experience and reasons for applying for the job. During later interviews, you can go into more detail about the technical details of the job and ask behavioral questions to gauge how they'd fit into your current company culture.

   It's also good to ask about candidates' unique skills and talents to see if they match your ideal candidate profile. If you think a candidate is good enough for the next step, you can move on to the technical interview.

   The right interview questions can help you assess a candidate's hard skills, behavioral intelligence, and soft skills.

7. Send a job offer and onboard your new associate counsel

   Once you've selected the best associate counsel candidate for the job, it's time to write an offer letter. In addition to salary, this letter should include details about the benefits and perks you offer the candidate. Ensuring that your offer is competitive is essential, as qualified candidates may be considering other job opportunities. The candidate may wish to negotiate the terms of the offer, and you should be open to discussion. After you reach an agreement, the final step is formalizing the agreement with a contract.

   It's also important to follow up with applicants who do not get the job with an email letting them know that the position is filled.

   Once that's done, you can draft an onboarding schedule for the new associate counsel. Human Resources should complete Employee Action Forms and ensure that onboarding paperwork is completed, including I-9s, benefits enrollment, federal and state tax forms, etc. They should also ensure that new employee files are created for internal recordkeeping.

8. Go through the hiring process checklist

   • Determine employee type (full-time, part-time, contractor, etc.)
   • Submit a job requisition form to the HR department
   • Define job responsibilities and requirements
   • Establish budget and timeline
   • Determine hiring decision makers for the role
   • Write job description
   • Post job on job boards, company website, etc.
   • Promote the job internally
   • Process applications through applicant tracking system
   • Review resumes and cover letters
   • Shortlist candidates for screening
   • Hold phone/virtual interview screening with first round of candidates
   • Conduct in-person interviews with top candidates from first round
   • Score candidates based on weighted criteria (e.g., experience, education, background, cultural fit, skill set, etc.)
   • Conduct background checks on top candidates
   • Check references of top candidates
   • Consult with HR and hiring decision makers on job offer specifics
   • Extend offer to top candidate(s)
   • Receive formal job offer acceptance and signed employment contract
   • Inform other candidates that the position has been filled
   • Set and communicate onboarding schedule to new hire(s)
   • Complete new hire paperwork (i9, benefits enrollment, tax forms, etc.)

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