Enrollment in the SEO Law Fellowship has plummeted amid a federal probe
At least 17 law firms have dropped out of a prestigious internship program that allegedly excluded white applicants, cutting the program’s enrollment in half as it faces a federal probe.
The defections from Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO), a nonprofit that places “underrepresented” students at elite law firms, came after the program and 44 participating firms were hit by a discrimination complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which opened an investigation last year.
In “position statements” submitted to the agency, 17 of those firms indicated that they no longer participate in the SEO Law Fellowship. The EEOC shared the firms’ statements with Americans for Equal Opportunity, the nonprofit behind the complaint, which provided the Washington Free Beacon with a list of firms that jumped ship, including Kirkland & Ellis, Gibson Dunn, Davis Polk, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
With fewer participating firms, the fellowship has been forced to downsize. It accepted just 58 fellows in 2026, down from 104 fellows the previous year, according to a LinkedIn post from a current fellow and internal data reviewed by the Free Beacon.
The decrease underscores the degree to which federal pressure has weakened diversity initiatives throughout Big Law, forcing firms to abandon or at least conceal their race-based hiring practices.
Several firms disavowed DEI as part of settlement agreements with the Trump administration, while others quietly removed race-conscious language from their websites and dismantled race-based affinity groups.
SEO itself purged any reference to race from its public-facing materials, which no longer use terms like “underrepresented” or even “underserved.” But according to Americans for Equal Opportunity, the fellowship is still using racial preferences.
The group filed a new charge with the EEOC this month alleging that SEO has continued to discriminate based on “race (White), color, national origin (American), religion (Christian), and sex (sexual orientation—heterosexual), in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” The president of Americans for Equal Opportunity, Clegg Ivey, also alleged that the program “added new preferences” for applicants who “identify as Muslim or Middle Eastern,” though that allegation does not appear in the EEOC filing. The group has characterized SEO as “the largest discriminatory pipeline program in the legal profession” and argued it violates Title VII.
The EEOC is taking those allegations seriously. It has launched a “pattern or practice” investigation into SEO, a rare and resource-intensive move reserved for allegations of systemic discrimination, according to a press release from Americans for Equal Opportunity.
Such probes made up less than 0.45 percent of the EEOC’s caseload in 2023. The agency defines systemic cases as “pattern or practice, policy and/or class cases where the discrimination has a broad impact on an industry, profession, company or geographic location.”
“Applicants should be judged as individuals,” Ivey said. “Equal opportunity means equal opportunity for everyone.”
Sponsors for Educational Opportunity declined to comment.
The 17 firms that dropped out of the program are as follows:
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
Clifford Chance LLP
Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Goodwin Procter LLP
Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer LLP (formerly known as Kramer Levin)
Hogan Lovells Cadwalader US LLP (formerly known as Hogan Lovells US LLP)
Jenner & Block LLP
Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Mayer Brown LLP
McDermott Will & Schulte LLP
Milbank LLP
Ropes & Gray LLP
Sidley Austin LLP
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
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