To the Editor:
Re “Easing Out the Gray-Haired. Or Not” (Business Day, May 28):
Although it is important to make room for younger partners, there are advantages to eliminating mandatory retirement in law firms. Age 65 is not what it used to be. Many of these senior partners have longstanding relationships with their clients, who will follow them to excellent firms that have abolished mandatory retirement. These opportunistic firms are collecting the dividends on the investments made by their more rigid counterparts.
And the partners, who very often have more energy than their junior colleagues, are taking on leadership positions and enhancing the reputations and growth of their new firms.
SANDRA LEIBOW
New York, May 31, 2011
The writer is a partner in The Leibow Jawin Group, a legal search firm specializing in partner placement.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 