FTC Complaint Accuses SEO Law Fellowship of False Advertising and Anticompetitive Labor Practices

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans for Equal Opportunity (AEO), a nonprofit civil rights organization, filed an antitrust complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accusing Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO) of false advertising and unlawful labor practices.

DOWNLOAD  THE COMPLAINT.

AEO alleges that SEO and law firms participating in the Fellowship may have misled law  firms about the Fellowship’s selection practices, and facilitated anticompetitive coordination among competing employers. 

SEO is a New York-based organization that operates the SEO Law Fellowship, which places incoming law students in paid summer associate positions at many of the nation's largest law firms. SEO is the legal industry’s largest “diversity pipeline” program.

AEO’s complaint identifies several similarities between the SEO Law Fellowship and Diversity Lab’s Mansfield Rule program. The Mansfield Rule was a DEI initiative that required law firms to interview a certain proportion of “underrepresented” candidates when hiring. Diversity Lab, the nonprofit that administered that program, recently ceased operations following an FTC investigation into whether its practices violated antitrust law.

AEO sent a letter to the FTC identifying two grounds for an investigation.

First, SEO facilitates anti-competitive activity among competing law firms by potentially colluding on DEI metrics, and recommending a minimum salary floor for summer associates, which may be a form of wage-fixing– a potential federal anti-trust violation. 

Second, SEO may have engaged in false advertising by telling participating law firms that it did not discriminate, and was focused on assisting “underserved” students. But even following Students for Fair Admissions, SEO continued hiring students based on race and other prohibited categories.

“The FTC is right: DEI programs create competition concerns,” said AEO President Clegg Ivey. “We believe SEO distorts the market for legal talent and functions as a cartel to allocate candidates between coordinating law firms. SEO also engages in false advertising. It tells law firms that it identifies ‘underserved’ students. But they still select interns based on race. Half of incoming black students at Yale Law School are SEO Fellows. These students enjoy extraordinary access to elite job opportunities. We hope the FTC will investigate.”

The law firms named in the complaint are:

• Alston & Bird

• Cooley LLP

• Covington & Burling LLP

• Cravath, Swain & Moore LLP

• Debevoise & Plimpton LLP

• Foley Hoag LLP

• Jones Day

• Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP

• Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP

• Proskauer Rose LLP

• Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP

• Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz

• White & Case LLP

• Williams & Connolly LLP

• Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP (WilmerHale)

AEO filed parallel complaints about employment discrimination in the SEO Law Fellowship with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) in 2025 and 2026. The EEOC allegations are the subject of an ongoing pattern or practice investigation. Pattern and practice investigations are rare, systemic investigations that represent less than 1% of the agency’s active caseload.

AEO’s full FTC complaint is available here.

Americans for Equal Opportunity Files New EEOC Charges Alleging Religious Discrimination by SEO Law Fellowship (Copy)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans for Equal Opportunity (AEO), a nonprofit organization dedicated to enforcing civil rights laws and equal treatment in employment, filed a new series of discrimination charges against Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO) and law firms participating in its SEO Law Fellowship.

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This is the second time the SEO Law Fellowship has faced charges alleging racial discrimination. AEO first filed charges against SEO and 44 participating law firms in May 2025. The 2025 charges remain the subject of an active EEOC pattern or practice investigation. 

AEO alleges that SEO gives preferential treatment to applicants it identifies as Muslim or Middle Eastern, despite publicly stating that the program is open to applicants of all backgrounds.

SEO operates a pre-law-school internship program that places incoming law students in paid summer positions with many of the nation’s largest law firms.

AEO alleges that after facing U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity (EEOC) charges in 2025 over racial and national origin discrimination, SEO did not abandon demographic preferences. Instead, SEO expanded or shifted those preferences to include religion.

The organization further alleges that SEO attempted to rebrand its program following the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard by adopting seemingly neutral language while continuing to favor applicants based on legally protected characteristics.

“For years, SEO hired Black and Hispanic students almost exclusively. That was the program’s stated purpose,” said AEO President Clegg Ivey. “After the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, SEO realized its practices would face increased legal scrutiny. SEO could have stopped discriminating. Instead, the program added new preferences, particularly for applicants who staff can identify as Muslim or Middle Eastern.”

“Applicants should be judged as individuals,” Ivey added. “Equal opportunity means equal opportunity for everyone.”

SEO is a New York-based nonprofit organization that operates the SEO Law Fellowship, a pre-law school employment program that places incoming law students, known as “Fellows,” in well-paid summer associate positions with many of the nation’s largest and most prestigious law firms. SEO is the largest discriminatory pipeline program in the legal profession.

Read the charge here.

The law firm respondents are:

• Alston & Bird

• Cooley LLP

• Covington & Burling LLP

• Cravath, Swain & Moore LLP

• Debevoise & Plimpton LLP

• Foley Hoag LLP

• Jones Day

• Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP

• Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP

• Proskauer Rose LLP

• Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP

• Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz

• White & Case LLP

• Williams & Connolly LLP

• Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP (WilmerHale)

AEO also filed charges against SEO and MR BEAST LLC, which hired an SEO fellow for an in-house legal internship.

Law firm participation in SEO has decreased significantly following AEO’s charges. AEO has confirmed that at least seventeen firms have withdrawn from SEO.

About Americans for Equal Opportunity:

Americans for Equal Opportunity is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to advancing equal opportunity, opposing unlawful discrimination, and promoting faithful enforcement of federal civil rights laws. AEO advocates for colorblind and equal application of anti-discrimination protections for all Americans.

AEO’s 2025 charges received significant media attention. A selection of past articles is available on AEO’s website.

Media Contact:

media@americansforequalopportunity.org

Americans for Equal Opportunity Files New EEOC Charges Alleging Religious Discrimination by SEO Law Fellowship

Washington, D.C. — Americans for Equal Opportunity (AEO), a civil rights membership organization, announced today that it has filed a formal Charge of Discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO) and 44 of the nation’s largest law firms. 

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The SEO Law Fellowship is the legal industry’s largest so-called “diversity pipeline” program, providing paid summer internships at the 44 prestigious law firms to nearly 200 incoming law students each year. AEO alleges that the program unlawfully discriminates on the basis of race, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

AEO filed the complaint on behalf of several members who were rejected from the 2025 SEO Law Fellowship despite meeting or exceeding all academic and professional qualifications. According to AEO, these applicants were excluded because they do not belong to the racial or ethnic groups preferred by SEO and its partner firms—namely, Black, Hispanic, or Native American applicants.

“This is systemic discrimination, plain and simple,” said AEO Board President Clegg Ivey. “SEO and its 44 partner law firms have built a racially exclusive hiring track that locks out qualified students based on the color of their skin. That’s not diversity—that’s unlawful discrimination.”

The complaint describes SEO as both a staffing agency and a joint employer that works on behalf of these law firms to implement race-based selection processes aimed at satisfying racial quotas and diversity targets. According to AEO, SEO recruits, screens, and selects roughly 200 Fellows each year and places them directly into paid summer positions at the firms, which can pay over $4,000 per week.  Often, the firms themselves do not conduct their own independent HR evaluations of candidates. 

“Law firms use SEO to bypass traditional merit-based hiring,” Ivey continued. “They outsource the selection process to a nonprofit organization that openly discriminates on their behalf, and they reward that discrimination with lucrative internship and job offers—often before students have received a single law school grade. Not only do they discriminate, they do it through a tax-exempt organization and treat it like a charitable contribution.”

The charge further asserts that many of the Fellowship’s participants are ultimately fast-tracked into otherwise competitive, full-time, permanent positions at the Sponsor Firms, often receiving offers to join the firm as an employee and bonuses not available to similarly situated law students of disfavored racial backgrounds, who must have top academic credentials to secure a job offer. (Entry-level positions at the Sponsor Firms pay a minimum of $220,000 per year before bonuses.)

AEO contends that both SEO and the Sponsor Firms are liable for unlawful discrimination, arguing that the program violates the Civil Rights Act’s prohibitions on race-based hiring by both employment agencies and employers.

Read the charge here.

Participating Law Firms:

• Allen Overy Shearman Sterling LLP

• Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld LLP

• Alston & Bird

• Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP

• Clifford Chance LLP

• Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP

• Cooley LLP

• Covington & Burling LLP

• Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP

• Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP

• Debevoise & Plimpton LLP

• Foley Hoag LLP

• Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP

• Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP

• Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP

• Goodwin Procter LLP

• Hogan Lovells US LLP

• Jenner & Block LLP

• Jones Day LLP

• Katten Muchin Rosenman

• Kirkland & Ellis LLP

• Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP

• Latham & Watkins LLP

• Mayer Brown LLP

• McDermott Will & Emery LLP

• Milbank LLP

• Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP

• Morrison & Foerster LLP

• Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP

• Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP

• Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP

• Proskauer Rose LLP

• Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP

• Ropes & Gray LLP

• Sidley Austin LLP

• Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP

• Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP

• Sullivan & Cromwell LLP

• Vinson & Elkins LLP

• Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz

• Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP

• White & Case LLP

• Williams & Connolly LLP

• Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP

About AEO:

Americans for Equal Opportunity is a nonprofit legal and advocacy organization committed to defending the principle of equal treatment under the law. AEO works to eliminate racial discrimination in education, employment, and public policy through litigation and public awareness efforts.

Contact:

Americans for Equal Opportunity

1901 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Suite 900, PMB 26
Washington D.C. 20006

media@americansforequalopportunity.org