The EEOC letters: 20 of the largest law firms investigated over diversity practices

Editor's note: the EEOC letters and the firms' concessions are documented, but no court or official finding establishes that the inquiry was retaliatory.

On March 17, 2025, three days after the Paul Weiss executive order, EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas sent letters to 20 of the largest US law firms demanding detailed information about diversity, equity, and inclusion employment practices, including hiring, internship, scholarship, and fellowship programs. The EEOC publicly framed the effort as being 'prepared to root out discrimination... in our nation's elite law firms.'

The 20 named firms, 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, and WilmerHale, include several firms simultaneously targeted by the separate executive-order campaign (Perkins Coie, Skadden, Milbank, WilmerHale), showing the two tracks of pressure operating on overlapping targets at the same time.

Bloomberg Law reported on May 22, 2025 that Goodwin Procter had provided the EEOC with more than 200 pages of information on its employment practices, ended its affiliation with the Sponsors for Educational Opportunities legal fellowship, suspended its relationship with the Leadership Council for Legal Diversity, withdrew from Mansfield Rule certification, and dropped a diversity-commitment requirement from its own fellowship program, a documented, granular record of one firm's concessions in apparent response to the investigation.