Sarah Flanagan Receives Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2020 Women, Influence & Power in Law Awards

Flanagan was honored for her extensive efforts to empower and mentor women over a 40-year career at Pillsbury. Under her leadership, the firm’s Board Committee for the Advancement of Women Attorneys (AoW) has earned Pillsbury “Law Firm of the Year” plaudits from Chambers Women In Law, praise as leaders for inclusion initiatives by Yale Law Women, and induction into Working Mother’s Law Firm Hall of Fame.

The WIPL Awards, formerly known as the National Women in Law Awards, honors top women lawyers who have made a marked difference in the legal profession—whether in shaping the law, achieving outsized results for their clients, being an outstanding jurist or assisting those in need of legal services.

The full list of 2020 winners is available here. 

In addition to her role as chair of the AoW Committee, Flanagan leads the firmwide Education team, counseling education, health care and energy clients on complex claims and disputes and winning precedent-setting cases. As primary counsel in jury and court trials, appellate proceedings, arbitrations, mediations, agency proceedings and government investigations, she has deep experience in issues related to privacy breaches, unfair business practices, price-fixing, Title IX, employment discrimination and retaliation, faculty tenure, sponsored research, environmental contamination and the Endangered Species Act.

Flanagan has given significant pro bono hours to varied causes, ranging from impact cases dealing with prisoner rights, to stewardship of assisted living residences for low-income seniors, and to varied matters for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. Flanagan was honored in 2014 with the Lawyers’ Committee’s prestigious Robert G. Sproul Jr. Award for providing outstanding legal representation to and marshaling firm resources for under-represented communities.