Big 4 and Mandatory Retirement

ABA To Firms: Retire Your Mandatory-Retirement Policies

“Should law firms have mandatory-retirement policies for their lawyers? The American Bar Association is saying no. Here’s the story from the National Law Journal’s Leigh Jones. According to a 2005 Altman Weil study, reports the NLJ, some 57 percent of law firms with more than 100 lawyers have them policies mandating that their lawyers step down upon reaching a certain age, typically between 65 and 75 years old. In a vote on Aug. 13 by the ABA’s House of Delegates at its annual meeting in San Francisco, the organization took the official position of urging law firms to rethink their policies.”

In many of the largest audit firms, the mandatory retirement age is 60. If you don;t make partner by 50 or so, it’s not worth it to you or the firm, given the amount of time for either to earn back their investment. Why so young? Because the recruiting model is still, “hire them right out of school and keep them for the duration or until they are no longer producing revenue,” otherwise known as plain old fashioned feudalism?