Imagine you have won £6.5m. Even if you just tuck it under your mattress, that’s a cool £100,000 a year tax free for the next 65 years.

You have an exquisite choice. You can kiss goodbye to the commute, the dark winter mornings, the stresses and grind of earning a crust as you relax into well-heeled retirement. Or you can continue working, like taxi driver George Sturt, 76, from Dorking, Surrey, who earlier this month pocketed £6.5m – his portion of a £26.1m EuroMillions lottery jackpot that he shared with his three children.

Dream on. The sad fact is, most of us will never have the luxury of choosing between affluent indolence and working just because we want to, not because we have to. Big hitters in City law firms (or BBC star journalists) apart, most of us need to work until we are shown the door aged 65, by which time – we hope – we will have paid enough into a pension fund to enjoy a comfortable retirement.

Except that is probably all about to change now.

Earlier this week the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) became the latest voice in a chorus of calls to abolish the default retirement age (DRA). The DRA works like this. In the year before you become 65, your employer is allowed by law to tell you that you must retire on or around your birthday. You can apply to stay on, if that’s what you want, and your employer can agree or otherwise. If it’s ‘otherwise’, there’s no appeal and you have to make do on your pension – or find another job.

The abolition of the DRA would allow the employee to choose when to retire. And if people elect to work on beyond 65, the EHRC says, then that’s fewer skills lost from the workplace, less money paid out on the state pension and more people with a pay packet to spend in shops, restaurants, car salesrooms, travel agents and so on. It’s good news all round.

The DRA has been tested in the courts already. Age Concern, in a case known as Heyday, took its challenge all the way to the European Court of Justice. The case was returned to the Court of Appeal, which ruled there was a compelling case to scrap the DRA. The case has now been put on hold pending a government review brought forward to some time this year.

All this applies to employees. That’s everybody in a law firm except equity partners, who count as self-employed. And even with equity partners there are exceptions to the rule. A former senior partner, Leslie Seldon, unsuccessfully claimed that Kent firm Clarkson Wright & Jakes had discriminated against him on the grounds of age when he was obliged to retire at 65. The tribunal ruled that the firm was able ‘objectively’ to justify his retirement; it was a ‘proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim’.

Rachel Dineley, an employment partner and head of diversity and discrimination at national firm Beachcroft, says that abolishing the DRA will soon pose a unique challenge to the legal profession as the Legal Services Act is fully implemented. ‘The old rules will cease to apply. We are going to see new types of legal services provider, with new ownership and management structures – and new career and retirement expectations, too.’

Arpita Dutt, an employment partner at national firm Russell Jones & Walker, says there is no good reason for retaining the DRA. ‘It has been argued that competence diminishes with age and that older people are unable to adjust to new IT and technology, but there is no evidential basis for this. On the contrary, older people have built up the skills and experience that come with maturity. They are role models to younger colleagues and they have often had long-term relationships with clients. Age should be managed as something of value to the firm – not solved by premature retirement.’

Does this raise the spectre of armies of grey-haired and stooped associates?

Well, yes – maybe.