When age discrimination was banned a couple of years ago, it was still OK to have a retirement age of 65 for employees but this did not apply to partnerships. So partners and their legal advisers were unclear how to deal with the issue - might it be necessary to let partners stay on till they dropped?
Now an employment tribunal has looked at the problem and decided it can be acceptable to have a compulsory retirement age of 65 for partners – but only if it can be objectively justified.
The case concerned a ten partner law firm whose partnership deed said that partners must retire when they reach 65. When the senior partner reached that age, he claimed this was discriminatory and contrary to the regulations.
The tribunal accepted the firm’s argument that a compulsory retirement age was necessary to enable the firm to develop and grow by bringing associates into the partnership. Also the firm had a policy of avoiding expulsion of a partner for poor performance as this was though to conflict with the supportive culture of the practice – in other words, even if a partner under-performs he will be allowed to stay on , but there is a cut-off date of 65.
The conclusion from this case is – if you have a partnership agreement and you want a compulsory retirement age, work out some good reasons why the rule should apply.
This decision may be subject to an appeal but, unless it is overturned, it should give some comfort to partnerships that are wondering how to deal with the uncertainty created by the Employment Equality (Age) Discrimination Regulations 2006.
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