The former equity partner whose age discrimination claim was dismissed by the Supreme Court last week after six years of litigation would ‘do it all again’, he told the Gazette.

Leslie Seldon (pictured) said there was ‘no bad blood’ between him and Clarkson Wright & Jakes (CWJ), the Kent firm which in 2006 made him conform to a partnership deed in which he had agreed to retire at 65. ‘It was nothing personal,’ he said. ‘The firm made the business decision not to retain me and I made the business decision to claim. It was something I had to do.’

Seldon’s claim for unfair dismissal on the grounds of age discrimination was argued before an employment tribunal, the Employment Appeal Tribunal, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. He was unsuccessful in all four applications, the courts accepting CWJ’s argument that it retired partners at 65 to allow younger solicitors to step up to partnership and to help retain talented lawyers. It was, the courts ruled, ‘a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’.

Seldon contests this line of argument. He said: ‘How can any age discrimination claim be successful if an employer simply has to argue that there are younger people in the firm?’ He said that age should never be a criterion for dismissing a person, because older and younger people bring different skills and attitudes to the workplace.

He described the answer as ‘good performance management… It is absolute rubbish to argue that performance management can be demeaning to senior staff. It is a positive process and infinitely fairer than declaring someone surplus to requirements the moment he or she passes a certain birthday’.

Seldon’s case has been referred back to the employment tribunal to consider whether the choice of a mandatory age of 65 was ‘proportionate’, but whatever the ruling, it cannot overturn the Supreme Court’s judgment.

CWJ managing partner Andrew Wright said: ‘We are not surprised by the Supreme Court decision given that all three previous courts, in particular the Court of Appeal, had been so decisively in our favour. We were always astonished that Mr Seldon should want to make a claim against us when it involved a clearly drafted document that he’d signed only 12 months before he retired under which he agreed to leave gracefully at 65.’

Seldon says he is undecided about his next move. ‘We are unlikely to go to Strasbourg,’ he said. ‘I think.’