President Donald Trump’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commision (EEOC) sent letters to 20 white shoe law firms on Monday requesting information about their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, arguing that many of the firms’ practices appear to violate civil rights law.
The letters, signed by acting EEOC chair Andrea Lucas, ask the firms to provide detailed information about their diversity fellowship programs—some of which explicitly limit eligibility based on race—and to explain how the firms achieved rapid changes in their demographic makeup without recourse to race discrimination.
Recipients of the EEOC’s letters include Latham & Watkins, WilmerHale, Skadden Arps, and White & Case. Two of the firms, Perkins Coie and Morrison & Foerster, were sued over their minority-only fellowships in 2023. Other firms in the agency’s crosshairs include Goodwin Procter, Hogan Lovells, and Kirkland & Ellis.
“The EEOC is prepared to root out discrimination anywhere it may rear its head, including in our nation’s elite law firms,” Lucas said. “No one is above the law—and certainly not the private bar.”
Trump has promised to root out unlawful DEI policies in the private sector, in part by instructing agencies like EEOC to assemble lists of targets for investigation. The letters to the 20 firms, which are among the most prestigious in the legal world, could mark the beginning of a crackdown on institutions that have long seemed above, or indifferent to, the law.
“Many major law firms operate … diversity internship or diversity fellowship programs, or provide certain summer associates with additional funds characterized as a diversity ‘scholarship,’ ‘bonus,’ ‘stipend,’ or ‘award,'” the letters note. Until 2023, when the Supreme Court outlawed affirmative action in college admissions, those programs were typically reserved for minority law students.
Many firms have also boasted of their success in reducing the number of non-white, non-LGBT attorneys on staff. In a now-deleted graphic on Cooley LLP’s website, for example, the firm indicated that it had increased the diversity of its lawyers—defined as “ethnic/racial diversity and LGBTQ+”—by 9 percentage points in just two years.
Such increases can translate into financial rewards: In 2021 and 2022, Microsoft, one of Cooley’s clients, paid the firm a 3 percent bonus for having met the tech giant’s diversity “goals.”
“Cooley directly (and likely significantly) financially benefited from the employment decisions the firm took that led to such a rapid increase in racial, ethnic, and LGBTQ+ representation in its lawyer ranks,” Lucas wrote in her letter to the firm. “I am concerned that Cooley’s ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or other employment programs, policies, and practices may entail unlawful disparate treatment in terms, conditions, and privileges of employment, or unlawful limiting, segregating, and classifying based—in whole or in part—on race, sex, or other protected characteristics.”
Each law firm has until April 15 to respond to the EEOC’s queries. The agency is asking firms to provide detailed data on the demographics of their employees, as well as information about the GPA cutoffs used for diversity fellowships.
“At any point since 2019, did the firm use GPA cutoffs or ranges for considering attorney applicants,” the letters read. “If the firm used GPA cutoffs or ranges, did these GPA cutoffs or ranges for similarly situated applicants (e.g., applicants from the same law school) differ based on an applicant’s race, sex, or other protected characteristic?”
