Thomas L. Sager Award

The Thomas L. Sager Award is presented to large Am Law 200 law firms (500+ attorneys) that champion a more diverse and inclusive workforce and have demonstrated a sustained commitment to improving the hiring, retention and promotion of diverse attorneys. The Sager Award was first presented in 1999 and is named after former DuPont Senior Vice President and General Counsel Thomas L. Sager, a widely-respected leader in diversity.

MCCA will select three national finalists and they will have an opportunity to showcase their diversity and inclusion efforts in a 90-second video, to be shown at the MCCA Diversity Gala at the American Museum of Natural History in New York on October 3, 2018. The three finalists will also be profiled in Diversity & the Bar® magazine, the official magazine of the MCCA.

The award will be presented to the winning firm’s Managing Partner or Firm Chair who will accept on behalf of the firm at the Gala, where more than 1,000 people are expected to attend including over 500 in-house lawyers. Winners are selected based on a stringent review and scoring of nominee’s efforts in recruitment, retention, promotion, accountability & metrics as well as implementation of innovative practices that impact and break the barriers to entry in the legal profession.

**Law firms with less than 500 attorneys will have an opportunity to apply for the George B. Vashon Innovator Award, and will be recognized at the Creating Pathways to Diversity® Conference on October 2, 2018. The 2018 Vashon Award application will be posted May 1, 2018.

The deadline for Thomas L. Sager Award applications is May 1, 2018.

To see how nominations will be evaluated, download the scorecard template.

About Thomas L. Sager

For more than two decades, DuPont has worked to achieve a stronger, more equitable balance of race, ethnicity and gender throughout the organization. Like environmental stewardship or on-the-job safety, the company has made diversity a corporate value — and driven it into every segment of its operation, from recruiting to training to professional development.

In DuPont’s legal department, Senior Vice President and General Counsel Tom Sager is a driving force for improving the hiring, retention, promotion, and involvement of minorities and women. Sager helped pioneer DuPont’s Convergence and Law Firm Partnering Program and continues oversight of the program today. Through his leadership, the DuPont Legal Model has received national acclaim for infusing business principles into the practice of law.

2017 National Winner

2017 National Finalists

Past Honorees

MCCA is proud to honor and distinguish firms that tried something new and succeeded, whether in recruitment and retention, mentoring, pipeline initiatives, LGBT initiatives, or client inclusion feedback. Click here to view the complete list of our past Thomas L. Sager Award honorees.