Partners Leap to New Firms to Avoid Mandatory Retirement
Law firms enforcing mandatory retirement policies are losing some of their older partners to other firms that will allow them to continue working.
The Washington Post and the New York Law Journal highlight three of them. At the age of 69, Michael Sohn left the law firm he once chaired, Arnold & Porter, to join Davis Polk & Wardwell. Two lawyers recently left Willkie Farr & Gallagher before they turned 65. Joel Goldberg became a partner at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, while William Grant became a senior counsel at Winston & Strawn.
Grant explained the reason for the move in an interview with the New York Law Journal. “I like what I do, I enjoy working, and I consider myself a young 64 at this point and don’t much want to play golf and sail all the time,” he said.
Both stories point to law firms that have abandoned mandatory retirement policies. The most recent is Kelley Drye & Warren, which dropped its policy after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a discrimination lawsuit. The EEOC had alleged that Kelley Drye undercompensated lawyers who were automatically removed from equity ownership after the age of 70.
Other firms that have dropped mandatory retirement include Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft, Dewey & LeBoeuf, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman and K&L Gates.
But other New York law firms still have mandatory retirement, the New York Law Journal says. They include Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where the retirement age is 65; Weil, Gotshal & Manges, where the age is 68; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, where the age is 70; and Willkie Farr, where the age is 65.
In 2007, both the ABA House of Delegates and the New York State Bar recommended that law firms drop retirement requirements. But law firms looking to oust partners after the economic downturn may have decided to hold on to mandatory retirement to help them thin their ranks, according to lawyer Mark Zauderer, who chaired a New York bar committee studying age discrimination in the profession.
“The recession really was at cross currents with whatever movement there was toward amending those policies,” Zauderer told the New York Law Journal.
