The golden years just got a bit shinier at Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis. Last week, the partnership voted to abolish the firm’s mandatory retirement age, which was at 70. “Our management group for a while has believed that such provisions are a vestige of times past, that they are not rationally grounded,” says Peter Kalis, the chairman and global managing partner of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart. “And that they are outside the mainstream of enlightened thinking about older lawyers and older workers generally," he added.
Last month Sidley Austin got a dose of enlightenment in the form of a $27.5 million payout to a settle a lawsuit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after the firm in 1999 forced out 32 partners, most of whom were over the age of 40. Given the outcome of the case and the fact that the EEOC has taken an interest in how firms are treating older workers, other firms might dismantle their policies as well. Kalis says, however, that the Sidley Austin settlement didn’t lead to the policy shift at Kirkpatrick and that the partnership has been considering the move since the beginning of the year.
Mandatory retirement ages among D.C. firms vary. Hogan & Hartson ended its retirement policy six years ago. “We have a number of partners who are highly productive and performing valuable services to clients and the firm well past 65,” says J. Warren Gorrell Jr., the firm's chairman. Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Door has a mandatory retirement age of 65, and the firm is not currently thinking about a change. Wiley Rein has never had a retirement policy. “Some people want to continue working,” says Richard Wiley, the firm’s managing partner: “And by the way, I’m one of them.” According to Wiley, his wife heartily supports that decision.
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