Laws prohibiting age discrimination that come into force next week could open the door to multi-million pound actions against law firms for wrongful dismissal, employment experts have warned.

James Davies, joint head of employment at Lewis Silkin, said the laws will expose profession-wide weaknesses in employment rights, including the lack in many firms of a transparent and objective means of measuring a partner's performance.


Mr Davies said: 'If the firm can't justify a dismissal for under-performance by pointing to a quantifiable failure to deliver results, we could see multi-million pound awards.'


Law Society President Fiona Woolf agreed. 'Firms that do not review the performance of older partners will find it difficult to let go of them when they under-perform,' she warned.


According to Michael Sippitt, employment specialist at Clarkslegal in Reading, lockstep is an area 'fraught with problems'. He said: 'Lockstep rewards time served rather than performance and ability, which could be construed as age discriminatory, especially to younger partners.'


Jonathan Rayner