He pushed outside counsel to hire more
minorities and women, and he pressed
just as hard internally. A smart move for
a company facing multiple lawsuits and
regulatory actions—the more representative
its legal teams, the better DuPont’s chances
with juries and regulators.
But that doesn’t explain his
determination, commitment and
leadership by example, says Joseph K.
West, president and CEO of the Minority
Corporate Counsel Association, of which
Sager is a founder and board member.
“Tom is the gold standard,” says West.
“There is a reason the MCCA’s highest honor
is the Thomas L. Sager Award. His name is
synonymous with diversity and inclusion.”
REFLECTING ON HIS CAREER AT
DuPont, Sager is less buttoned down
than usual: suit jacket but no tie, looking
a little rumpled and grumbling affably
about the traffic, having walked in 11
minutes late. Somber portraits of past
GCs and DuPont presidents stare down
in a dark-paneled conference room at
the famously fancy Hotel du Pont in
Wilmington, Del., the city that has served
as DuPont’s headquarters since its
founding in 1802. His office has already
been cleared in preparation for his
retirement. Typical Sager: Ready early,
looking forward and favoring efficiency.
His eyes light when talking about his
two sons. One works as a paralegal, the
other is a lawyer. And there’s a touch of
sadness, too. His travel during his time
at DuPont—to Geneva, Brussels, Beijing,
Sao Paulo, Delhi, Moscow, Mexico City
and beyond—helped put out fires and
solidified attorney loyalty at a time when
headhunting raged, but it was difficult
being away.
Born in Winchester, Mass., to a father
who was a DuPont sales and HR executive
and a mother who was a homemaker, the
Sager family, including an older sister,
followed as his father was posted back
and forth between Rhode Island and
Delaware multiple times. Always a good
student and a hard worker—he moved
furniture for $3.15 an hour in high school
and college—Sager earned his JD at
Wake Forest. DuPont hired him out of
law school in 1976 to work on labor and
corporate security issues.
With an uncle who had also worked at
DuPont, it felt right.
“When somebody devotes their career
to a company, you take notice, and my
dad was quite happy with his career,”
says Sager. “That reinforced that DuPont
was a good place to work and it stuck
with me.”
In fact, it was one of his dad’s poker
partners who led Sager to the law. “He
was a solo practitioner and he was as
Irish as you could be,” says Sager. “He
took whatever came in the door, had a
successful practice, and he would give me
books to dive into. He ended up being a
great legal mentor. He had one of those
upbeat views of life, very down to earth
and street-smart and self-confident—but
he took the law seriously.”
Though Sager enjoyed labor law,
he agreed to move to Washington,
D.C., to represent the company as a
registered lobbyist, back when elected
officials weren’t surrounded by layered
perimeters of staff and security. He
met former House Speaker Tip O’Neill,
U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley and U.S. Sen. Ted
Kennedy. It was fun, until he tried to
actually get something done.
“Watching grass grow,” he says. “The
pace, that’s what killed me.”
Retreating to Wilmington, he became
the company’s chief litigation counsel
in 1998. In July 2008 he was named
“Tom is the gold standard,” says Minority
Corporate Counsel Association CEO and President
Joseph K. West. “There’s a reason [our] highest
honor is the Thomas L. Sager Award.”
the 12th general counsel in a legal
department that was 111 years old,
joining Alexander Hamilton as one of
the lawyers charged with representing
the company. He likes to joke that while
Hamilton, the company’s first attorney,
died from a gunshot wound suffered
during his duel with Aaron Burr, the
good news is they were both using
DuPont gunpowder.
Thanks to Sager, corporate attorneys
and their departments are no longer
considered “no people” who won’t let
the business side do their jobs. Nor are
they cost centers. But back in the early
‘90s, when Sager, then associate general
counsel, began approaching outside
counsel with his reform ideas, the
reaction was predictable. They figured he
was dressing up cost-cutting, and if they
waited him out, he would go away.
At the time, Sager was wrestling with an
avalanche of claims, including mass torts
cases involving asbestos, the fungicide
Benlate, Delrin polybutylene plumbing
and TMJ jaw implants; M&A was a real
cost issue as well. DuPont was spending
north of $100 million over several years
defending claims, he says. “So it was very
expensive. The businesses were being
distracted by all this litigation, and we
needed to make a step change.”
So in 1992, the DuPont Legal Model was
born. “It’s seven phases, none of which
were preordained; just as the program
evolved, certain needs or opportunities
arose,” Sager says. “It started with
convergence, which was three and half
years … [of] whittling our firms down.”
DuPont was using some 350 outside
firms. He slashed that to what’s now a
mere 38. Those left standing agreed to
do it the DuPont way: faster and more
efficiently, like businesses instead of old-school law firms.
