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.
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.