44 Law Firms Hit With Discrimination Complaint Over Race-Based Internship

Washington Free Beacon ^ | May 12, 2025 | Aaron Sibarium

[Twotone]

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."

---

TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: dei; discrimination; eeoc; lawfirms

[Jeff Chandler]

It all makes sense now.

[Bruce Campbells Chin]

Race and gender based preferences have been openly practiced at a lot of major law firms for decades. The head of my practice group, who was himself black (also an incredibly good lawyer) admitted that the race-based hirings that the firm was doing was illegal, but that we didn’t have any choice because large corporate clients were demanding that a certain percentage of work be done by women and minorities.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

Notice that the glaring problem with the rogue judges are their low IQs, and variations on stupid blacks and/or females.

[healy61]

Lawyers are rarely trusted. Courts and made up of lawyers. Lawyers come from racist ivy league colleges.

[Dr. Franklin]

Notice that the glaring problem with the rogue judges are their low IQs, and variations on stupid blacks and/or females.

They are taught to be sophists. They decision comes first, and they just make things up to justify it later, e.g. voters have no standing to object to a rigged election, etc. Women tend to be better at creative writing than men, and law school exams tend to be about how fast someone can write, not how well they actually analyze a problem.

[boomstick]

Big Finance is in bed with SEO. Name the top banking and investing firms, they all use SEO to boost their numbers at the expense of white kids. They also have short programs, ranging from a day or two up to a week, that are directed at women or at underrepresented minorities, that provide an early pool of intern candidates ahead of the solicitation of resumes from the general population. They are all at risk of being the next to he sued or prosecuted.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

"The decision comes first, and they just make things up to justify it later."

BINGO! Exactly. You nailed it.

[AuntB]

“It all makes sense now.”

And how!!

Not only were they Hunter Biden friendly, that’s Phil Perry’s law firm....

WHO???

LIZ CHENEY’S HUSBAND!

You’re damn right they hire leftists!!!

He is a partner at Latham & Watkins in Washington, D.C., and has served as
lead counsel on.... (Wikipedia)

Exposing the Dept. of Job Security (who is Philip Perry?)

https://towncriernews.blogspot.com/2007/02/exposing-dept-of-job-security-who-is.html?m=1

[ridesthemiles]

MORE REVERSE DISCRIMINATION?

[Dr. Franklin]

BINGO! Exactly. You nailed it.

If you saw the law school exams, you would understand the problem. They are called "issue spotting" tests. They give the students a ridiculous fact pattern, with a lot missing information, so that there are many possible issues depending on the unknown facts. The students are expected to find as many issues as possible, not show that they have mastered the law. So the answer is "it could be this, and it could be this, and it could be this." If they pass three years of this, they get a degree which translates as a doctorate in law, without ever writing a dissertation about anything. A better system would have students master the law before learning advocacy, like the Brits do, but that's not what the ABA wants. The idea is that law can be whatever the judge wants it to be, and the job of the attorney is to guide him/her on the way. In practice, lawyers learn what a judge or court will accept, but the wealthy continue to drag out cases hoping to outspend the opposition.

[Bruce Campbells Chin]

The vast majority of lawyers do not come from the Ivy League. However, the vast majority do lean left.

You should consider where we'd all be but for the ones who lean right.

[jpp113]

The Brit system would not work in the US. The main problem is there is one set of laws in the UK, in the US there are are 51 different sets of laws: one for the fed, and 50 different sets corresponding to the state. A law school cannot teach you to master those. If they tried, you’d still be in law school 20 years down the road.

[Dr. Franklin]

The main problem is there is one set of laws in the UK, in the US there are are 51 different sets of laws: one for the fed, and 50 different sets corresponding to the state. A law school cannot teach you to master those.

Buffalo chips! Before the ABA got a monopoly on the law schools in the U.S., law schools taught students how to pass the bar exam in that state. That means they taught federal law and the law of that state to the students. I know an old judge who thought it was a disgrace that students needed to take bar review classes to learn what wasn't taught at the law school. It wasn't that way in his day.

[Dr. Franklin]

I knew an old judge who thought it was a disgrace that students needed to take bar review classes to learn what wasn't taught at the law school. It wasn't that way in his day.

He's dead, Jim.

[Vaduz]

Humor note not racism

Johnny Lee is best known as the shyster lawyer Algonquin J. Calhoun in the Amos ‘N’ Andy TV Series. In some of the 1948-49 radio episodes where the Calhoun character is introduced, he is referred to as “Five Percent Calhoun” because his fee was 5% of whatever he got for his clients.

[jpp113]

The old way that you speak about would limit bar membership to only the state where the law school is. Its no longer the country it was when Abe Lincoln was practicing. What law school did you go to?

[Albion Wilde]