LGBT Great Careers Partner: Sackers

About Us

Sackers is the UK’s leading commercial law firm for pension scheme trustees, employers, corporate investors and providers. Our specialist focus and depth of resource enables us to deliver consistently high quality advice and service.

Our entire focus is on advising the pensions industry. We advise trustee boards, sponsoring employers, providers and Government bodies. With a client roster of more than 500 occupational pension schemes, expert legal advice is only the start of our service. We look at what our clients are trying to achieve and give the most commercial and pragmatic advice to reach that objective. This is one of the reasons we have so many long standing clients, with some relationships lasting decades.

We are consistently ranked in the top tier for pensions by both leading UK legal directories (Chambers UK and the Legal 500) and have been for the last twenty years.

In addition to providing advice on ongoing operational issues, we have evolved our offering to match our clients’ changing requirements. This includes our finance and investment capability to assist with liability management, SPVs, guarantees and security arrangements; and a pension disputes unit to advise on contentious issues.

Find out more

Pride in Pensions: What should trustees and providers be doing to support trans and non-binary members?

Read full blog here.

Dan Traynor
Associate at Sackers and LGBT Great Role Model

Equality, diversity & inclusion

The nature of our work and client base call for diverse perspectives to deliver the best advice: we support trustees, employers and providers on an immense variety of work, right up to the knottiest, highest value and most technical matters in the industry. We believe passionately that our staff will be most successful when they bring their authentic selves to work and when they feel safe and respected and are protected from all forms of harm in the workplace. Our staff are entitled to expect that any dealings with them (whether from colleagues, clients or third parties) will be free from discrimination, harassment, victimisation or bullying, and we operate a zero tolerance approach in this regard.

Diversifying access to the profession
Research shows that socio-economic background affects progression to partner. 62% of our partners attended a state school – 15% more than the City firm average. However, we recognise that there is an underrepresentation of ethnic minority lawyers within our firm and more widely.

Gender and family positive
Our working environment allows women to progress. While the average across the industry is 33% female partners (dropping to 25% of equity partners), almost 60% of our partners and 65% of our fee earners are female.

We take active steps to maintain our positive approach to gender diversity and our family friendly culture, including our family leave policy, which provides working parents, regardless of gender, 26 weeks of full pay. We pride ourselves on our inclusive culture and providing this “gold standard” policy is an example of the firm incentivising co-parents, as well as birth mothers, to take time off work to care for their babies.

LGBTQ+
We celebrate LGBTQ+ diversity among the Sackers team, and in the wider world. As one of the few openly gay firm heads in the legal sector, and one of the best known LGBTQ+ leaders in the pensions world, senior partner David Saunders is a role model in both. 

We are members of inclusive organisations celebrating the LGBTQ+ community in our industry such as LGBT Great, and we mark Pride by inviting LGBTQ+ community members to speak to our team, promoting understanding and celebrating diversity throughout the population. Read David’s account of his personal journey to coming out here.

Mental health and wellbeing
Lawyers across the profession are increasingly speaking out about the pressure they face at work. Recognising this, we actively promote the mental health of all staff, and aim to ensure that work at Sackers is not another source of stress and anxiety. A range of proactive measures offering relevant services to our team help create a safety net in this critical area, in addition, we have four dedicated mental health first aiders, and we are signatories to the Mindful Business Charter, a practical framework that encourages us to be more thoughtful about the impact we have on each other and to foster better working practices for mental health and wellbeing.

Work-life balance
Given the technical intricacy of much of our work, we are at our best when we enjoy a genuinely healthy work-life balance. We are supportive of staff working flexibly, and a high proportion of Sackers lawyers take advantage of flexible working arrangements.

Disability
We support employees with disabilities/medical conditions and make appropriate adjustments to support them in their roles. We have signed up to the Disability Confident scheme to support us in recruiting and retaining the best people and to make the most of the opportunities provided by employing disabled people.

Diversity statistics

Disability Confident employer

Emily Rowley wins Rising Star Lawyer of the Year award

Working at Sackers

We employ over 100 people at Sackers, most of whom are interested in a long term career with us. Many people join us because of our distinctive culture.  In part this is because we are a specialist firm, but also because we value individuality. People at all levels of the business are down to earth and approachable.  There is a respect for the individual and an acknowledgement that individual differences can provide a more rounded service.

In addition to high quality work and training, you can expect:

• To be treated fairly and with respect
• A sociable working environment
• A healthy work-life balance
• Feedback on your performance
• Opportunities to contribute to the wider community