James Sage
Partner | Co - Head of Health & Social Care
Health & Social Care Sector | Employment | Health and Social Care
About James:
James is a HR and employment law specialist with strong commercial and business acumen. He has an ability to build value added strategic relationships with clients and is known for his pragmatic and straightforward approach. James provides the insight and expertise to enable clients to make the best business and people decisions.
James’ work has been recognised by Legal 500 (the clients’ guide to the best law firms) as “excellent” and his team has been recognized for providing “an excellent overall service” and for being “very responsive”.
James supports clients with complex employment law cases including whistleblowing and discrimination, senior executive exits, large scale redundancy/reorganisation, Employment Tribunal litigation, TUPE and employment aspects of business sales, acquisitions and mergers
Join James and our team of Health and Social Care specialists as they explore the new world of Social Care with sector experts.
He specialises in providing niche expertise in regulated sectors including:
- Health & social care, children’s services, dental practices, GP’s, and pharmacies
- He co-heads the firm’s Health & Social Care team and has a keen interest in workforce, regulatory, and statutory issues affecting the sector
- He is also a Board Trustee of the Care Workers Charity
- Charities
- Education
James is a frequent commentator in the press with thought leading articles on the challenges that HR professionals are facing. He is a regular guest speaker at regional and national conferences and runs popular HR and employment law training and seminars.
James also has a trusted reputation for, and enjoys, representing individual clients, typically senior executives referred by other law firms, business contacts or previous clients.
James’ recent work highlights include:
- Advising a large care home group facing a serious local authority safeguarding investigation, managing a whistleblowing complaint and taking disciplinary action
- Supporting a charity managing a joint grievance by six staff against a senior manager and implementing disciplinary and dismissal procedures
- Implementing a three phase redundancy and restructuring exercise over 18 months, with no appeals against dismissals or Employment Tribunal claims
- Providing employment support, including HR due diligence, negotiating employment warranties and indemnities and TUPE advice on health and social care transactions with a value of in excess of £100m in one year
- Successfully defending an Employment Tribunal claim for sex, race and disability discrimination
- Advising a senior executive of a financial services company on an exit and settlement agreement including share and bonus worth in excess of £2m
"He is calm and relaxed in his approach with extensive knowledge around subject matters, particularly Employment Law in the context of the Social Care Market."
"As an organisation, we are highly satisfied that James has an understanding of our business and the key managers that work within the service as this is reflected in the advice that is provided to us."
“We always get great advice and service from the team."
“I just wanted to say thank you to you and your team for the excellent service that we have received since we have taken out our employment services with you.
The information that has been provide has been concise, in plain English (jargon free), and the instructions that you and your team have been thorough, and crystal clear.
In addition to this, we always receive a prompt response, and you and your staff always go the extra mile to deliver great advice.
It is a pleasure dealing with you and your team, and we look forward to collaboratively enhancing the great partnership we are developing over the next few years.”
“We have had very good, timely and detailed advice from them which has helped us considerably in resolving issues in a pragmatic manner and in the process avoided expensive escalation of issues. We have worked with several law firms in the past, but our experience with RWK Goodman has been far superior to these other firms especially in their specialist knowledge of the care industry and its everyday common place type issue. This has given us peace of mind and we will highly recommend them without any hesitation.”
Learn more about James's areas of expertise:
Emerging from the storm
Exploring the new world of Social Care
Health and social care is a sector defined by resilience. However, the pandemic put even more strain on that resilience.
Join us as we go on a journey with Sector experts and innovators as we explore the new world of Social Care. This report is brought to you by our team of Health and Social Care specialists.