The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is investigating 20 of the biggest law firms in the world for discrimination as US President Donald Trump continues to ratchet up pressure on the legal profession to fall in line with his anti-diversity agenda.
The 20 Global 100 firms, which include revenue leaders Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins and magic circle duo Freshfields and A&O Shearman (see full list below), have each received a letter addressed from EEOC acting chair Andrea Lucas in relation to their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.
The letters ask for expansive information on all applicants for jobs at the firms since 2019, including name, sex, race, phone number, email address and the law school they were hired from.
For successful applicants, the letters also request details including date hired, compensation, tuition repayment assistance, title, date of promotion, and office location.
The firms have until 15 April to comply with the requests.
The EEOC says that the investigations have come as a result of ‘concerns that some firms’ employment practices, including those labelled or framed as DEI, may entail unlawful disparate treatment in terms, conditions, and privileges of employment, or unlawful limiting, segregating, and classifying based on race, sex, or other protected characteristics, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII)’.
This latest escalation comes after the Trump administration fired the opening shot in its battle with global law firms over DEI with a 6 March executive order entitled ‘Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie LLP’.
In addition to targeting US firm Perkins Coie over its work for US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, the order directed the EEOC to ‘review the practices of representative large, influential, or industry leading law firms for consistency with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’, and to coordinate with the federal attorney general and state attorneys general to investigate the practices of such firms who do business with the federal government ‘for compliance with race-based and sex-based non-discrimination laws’.
This was followed a week later by a similar presidential order targeting Paul Weiss, revoking the firm’s security clearances and stating that the elite US firm ‘discriminates against its own employees on the basis of race and other categories prohibited by civil rights laws’.
The order – which began by asserting that ‘global law firms have for years played an outsized role in undermining the judicial process and in the destruction of bedrock American principles’ – continued: ‘Along with nearly every other large, influential, or industry leading law firm, [Paul Weiss] makes decisions around “targets” based on race and sex. My administration is committed to ending such unlawful discrimination perpetrated in the name of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies.’
While the law firms targeted have been largely silent, associates from a raft of top firms have added their names to an open letter coordinated by third-year Skadden finance associate Rachel Cohen.
The letter states: ‘We call on our employers, large American law firms, to defend their colleagues and the legal profession by condemning this rapid purge of ‘partisan actors,’ a group that seems to be synonymous with those the president feels have wronged him. Our politics and feelings about the industry and its path forward are varied. But we are united in our condemnation of the administration’s intimidation tacts, viewpoint discrimination, and attempts to weaponize the executive [branch] against the rule of law.’
‘Our hope was that our employers, some of the most profitable law firms in the world, would lead the way’, it continues. ‘That has not yet been the case, but it still very much can be. It is easy to be afraid of being the first to speak. We are removing that barrier; we are speaking. Now it is our employers’ turn.’
Perkins Coie has since filed a legal challenge to the order issued against it, and is being represented by Washington DC firm Williams & Connolly.
Complete list of firms targeted:
- A&O Shearman
- Debevoise & Plimpton
- Cooley
- Freshfields
- Goodwin Procter
- Hogan Lovells
- Kirkland & Ellis
- Latham & Watkins
- McDermott Will & Emery
- Milbank
- Morgan Lewis
- Morrison Foerster
- Perkins Coie
- Reed Smith
- Ropes & Gray
- Sidley Austin
- Simpson Thacher
- Skadden
- White & Case
- WilmerHale
