Forty-four of the nation’s largest law firms were hit with a discrimination complaint on Monday alleging that they use an outside staffing agency to hire interns based on race, putting Big Law on track for another clash with the Trump administration.
The complaint, filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, targets Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO), a nonprofit that places minority students at elite firms the summer before their first year of law school. The paid internship often leads to a return offer the following summers, giving recipients an extraordinary leg up on their white peers.
Americans for Opportunity, the group that filed the complaint, is asking the EEOC to investigate both SEO and its sponsor firms, which include Wachtell Lipton, Davis Polk, and Sullivan & Cromwell. If the agency launches a probe, it could put an end to what the complaint describes as "the largest racially discriminatory hiring pipeline program in the legal field."
The complaint comes as the EEOC is already investigating 20 law firms, including some that receive interns through SEO, over other race-based programs. The Trump administration has also launched a controversial and unprecedented campaign against law firms perceived to be politically biased, threatening to cancel their government contracts unless they agree to do pro bono work aligned with the administration’s priorities. While a few firms have secured court orders against the White House, others have chosen to take the deal.
The complaint could intensify the feud between Big Law and the Trump administration as the government continues its scorched-earth campaign against racial preferences. Eight of the most prominent firms to settle with the White House—Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps, Latham & Watkins, Kirkland & Ellis, Allen Overy Shearman, Simpson Thacher, Milbank, and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft—pledged to end all race-based hiring programs as part of the agreement. But all eight firms are currently listed as "partners" on SEO’s website, which for many years stated that the internship was only for "students of color."
Though that language was scrubbed from the site within the last couple years, the organization’s official X account still says that the program is for "incoming law students from underrepresented backgrounds." A Linkedin profile for the director of SEO San Francisco, Omar Wandera, likewise describes the group’s programs as "tailored for underrepresented minorities."
SEO did not respond to a request for comment. Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps, Latham & Watkins, and Kirkland & Ellis did not respond to requests for comment.
The complaint provides a case study in how racial preferences can be disguised and outsourced to nonprofits that help firms launder discrimination through a third party, letting them claim to make decisions solely on merit.
Most firms that receive interns through SEO let the group conduct all aspects of the vetting process, including interviews, and take whatever interns the nonprofit sends their way. This year, however, a few also required candidates to interview with the firm itself—apparently in an effort to create legal cover for the program.
Firms "are going through the extra step of interviewing for the firm because of this anti-DEI stuff going on," one member of the SEO fellowship wrote on a message board for prospective applicants, according to the complaint. "The interview is so that [Sponsor Firms] can argue (if needed) that [selection] was merit based too."
The decision to outsource vetting to SEO has resulted in some strange hires. One summer intern recruited through the program runs an online store that sells stickers declaring "OPEN SEASON ON CEOS," according to redacted exhibits in the complaint. Another intern shared a post on X that likened sex with white women to bestiality, reposting a screenshot of a Facebook post that read: "If you can fck a white girl you can fck a dog."
Because interns are hired before they’ve taken a single law school class, most of them are "unable to complete substantive legal work for Sponsor Firms or their clients," the complaint says. This system also means that SEO’s hiring decisions are not based on law school grades in the way most legal internships are.
Even when law firms make return offers contingent upon first year grades, the complaint asserts, "the minimum required GPA for Fellows is lower than the required GPA for students from non-preferred races and ethnicities."
Firms may be willing to put up with a lack of preparedness because of the diversity targets set by their corporate clients, which often require firms to staff each case with a certain percentage of minorities. Some companies also give law firms a bonus if they hit the diversity targets. Microsoft’s law firm diversity program, for example, has provided extra compensation to its attorneys at Cooley, Morgan Lewis, White & Case, and Latham & Watkins—all of which receive interns through SEO.
"This pressure from major clients has created demand for a staffing agency like SEO," the complaint reads. "Of course, client demands do not supersede the Civil Rights Act."