A senior moment

Bemused partnership advisers report a wave of what can only be described as mild panic circulating through law firms in the aftermath of the arrival of the new age discrimination laws last week. One specialist received a call from a senior partner asking if he could still be called senior partner under the new regime.

As Legal Week reported last Thursday (see story), several firms were still tweaking various bits of their governance after the rules had come into place. While few firms seem likely to go as far as Simmons & Simmons - where birthday celebrations must no longer contain references to age - Lovells, Ashurst and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer were all considering raising their retirement ages to 65.That’s progress for you.

Does this mean that partners are going to get older – and that the route to partnership become even more tortuous for all those ambitious assistants?

Almost certainly not, if Addleshaw Goddard partnership expert Richard Linsell is to be believed. Linsell, who himself moved from Maher Brown Rowe & Maw in order to take advantage of Addleshaws’ more flexible retirement policy, points out that as long as partner appraisals do not take age into account, partners will continue to ride off into the sunset well before the age of 65. (You can see Linsell’s Talkback comments here at the bottom of the page.)

Nobody has a job for life these days - and partners must justify the salaries they are paid. What all this does mean, however, is that law firms will have to operate watertight appraisal regimes for all their staff, including partners (see David Dickinson: Making Partner Pay Flexible But Fair here).

And, as Linsell suggests, the human resources head will be up for a pay rise.