In 2025, the Trump administration issued multiple executive orders and implemented various measures to eliminate DEI initiatives in federal agencies and curtail such programs in the private sector. The legal profession has not been exempt from this sweeping change. Law firms across the country have found themselves navigating a dramatically altered landscape, with many reevaluating their DEI commitments amid increased scrutiny and potential legal risks. This shift has fundamentally reshaped discussions surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion in the profession, forcing firms to balance longstanding commitments to workplace diversity with compliance concerns and evolving legal interpretations of permissible DEI practices.

Law Firm Responses to Anti-DEI Orders
Law firms of all sizes have responded in various ways to anti-DEI executive orders. One wide-
spread response, documented across multiple news outlets, has been to rebrand diversity
initiatives and quietly remove explicit references to DEI and certain pro bono programs from their websites. According to an April 2025 Guardian article, “Nearly two dozen US law firms have quietly scrubbed references to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) from their website and revised descriptions of pro-bono work to more closely align with Donald Trump's priorities,” demonstrating what the Guardian characterizes as “the Trump administration's successful campaign of intimidation against the legal profession.”1

Beyond rebranding efforts, several major law firms—including Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Latham &
Watkins LLP, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, and A&O Shearman Sterling, LLC—reached
agreements with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that represent
a more substantial capitulation to administration pressure. Under these multi-year agreements, the firms collectively committed to providing $600 million in pro bono legal work to the Trump administration while agreeing to significant operational changes. According to the EEOC, these firms “affirmed their commitment to lawful merit-based hiring, promotion, and retention; agreed not to engage in unlawful discrimination or preferences based on race, sex, or other protected characteristics, including in any policies, programs,
and practices previously labeled, characterized, or framed as a diversity or DEI program; agreed to no longer categorize any lawful employment or practices (including those addressing equal employment opportunity, accessibility, or reasonable accommodation for religion, disability, or pregnancy) as DEI; and agreed to compliance monitoring.”2

Rebranding Efforts
In response to the current administration’s views on DEI, numerous law firms with California
offices rapidly rebranded or eliminated their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs.
Major firms have even removed DEI-specific language from their websites, archived diversity
reports, and dissolved employee resource groups.3 This shift represents a significant retreat from public diversity commitments that these firms had championed for years, with many firms citing regulatory scrutiny as the driving factor behind their decisions.

Rather than abandoning workplace culture initiatives entirely, firms adopted euphemistic
alternatives designed to avoid regulatory attention while ostensibly maintaining some
commitment to workplace inclusion. However, the substantive changes—including the removal of references to institutional racism, LGBTQ+ issues, and disability accommodations—suggest these rebranding's often involve more than semantic shifts.

Examples of Rebranding Terms:
Culture & Engagement (Reed Smith, Dentons) Inclusion (Hogan Lovells) Engagement & Development (White & Case) Pathways Scholars Program (Latham & Watkins - formerly "Diversity Scholars Program")

Navigating this Cultural Shift
The legal profession faces a critical inflection point as regulatory pressures and political shifts threaten decades of progress toward creating more inclusive workplaces. Despite the recent retreat from public DEI commitments, the fundamental challenges remain: the legal
profession continues to lack representative diversity at partnership levels, women and
attorneys of color face persistent barriers to advancement, and systemic inequities in
recruitment, retention, and promotion have not disappeared simply because firms have removed diversity pages from their websites.

To combat these unprecedented changes, law firms and legal organizations must move beyond performative statements and instead embed inclusive practices into core business operations—integrating diverse candidate pipelines into standard recruiting processes, implementing transparent and equitable promotion criteria, ensuring diverse representation on client matters and pitch teams, investing in mentorship and sponsorship programs that are baked into performance evaluations rather than voluntary initiatives, and holding leadership accountable for measurable inclusion outcomes through compensation and advancement decisions. Rather than abandoning the work because the terminology has become politically fraught, forward-thinking firms can demonstrate genuine commitment by making inclusion an operational imperative rather than a separate program, proving that building diverse, equitable work-places is not only legally defensible but essential to attracting top talent, serving increasingly diverse clients, and maintaining competitive
advantage in a global legal marketplace.

1https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/11/law-firms-dei
2https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/eeoc-settlement-four-biglaw-firms-disavow-dei-and-affirm-their-commitment-merit-based
3 https://abovethelaw.com/2025/02/biglaw-firm-quietly-begins-purging-diversity-language-from-website/