Law Commons^™

A Crumbling Pyramid: How The Evolving Jurisprudence Defining “Employee” Under The Adea Threatens The Basic Structure Of The Modern Large Law Firm, Jessica Fink

Faculty Scholarship

Part I of this article describes the legal framework for analyzing whether a partner can sue under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act ("ADEA"), focusing on two fairly recent decisions in this area: (i) The U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Clackamas Gastroenterology Assoc., P.C. v. Wells, a case in which the Court had to determine whether director-shareholder physicians in a medical clinic should be deemed employees for purposes of the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"); and (ii) the Seventh Circuit's 2002 decision in a lawsuit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") against the law firm Sidley & …