[1][2] His father, Leon, worked as a labor arbitrator and taught political science at Johns Hopkins University;[1][3] his mother, Shirley (Blum), was a housewife.

He acted concurrently as a reporter to the Committee on State Finance and Taxation for the Maryland Constitutional Convention Commission.

On the fiftieth anniversary of the incident, Sachs wrote that he was of the opinion that the nine were "brave" individuals "who acted out of a conviction that the war in Vietnam was profoundly evil".

[9][10] He was also a faculty member at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law from 1969 to 1976, teaching criminal procedure and trial practice.

One of his successors, Brian Frosh, recalled how Sachs declined to defend Maryland's practice of warehousing individuals with mental health disorders, resulting in their release.

[13] Sachs was an unsuccessful candidate in the 1986 Maryland gubernatorial primary[14] with Parren Mitchell as his running mate,[15] losing to eventual general election winner William Donald Schaefer.

[16] Sachs was a partner in the firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr (aka WilmerHale) from 1987 until his retirement in 1999.

[20] In 2008, Governor Martin O'Malley appointed Sachs to head an independent review of Maryland State Police infiltration of activist groups that were acting lawfully.