Facing DEI pressures, some law firms shield data in latest diversity survey

By Karen Sloan

March 24 (Reuters) - Nearly 50 U.S. law firms that previously provided demographic data about their lawyers to an organization that tracks it declined to do so this year, the group said, attributing the drop to a crackdown on law firm diversity, equity and inclusion efforts since President Donald Trump returned to office.

The National Association for Law Placement’s 2025 report on law firm diversity includes data from 180 law firms — 47 fewer than the previous year. As a result, its dataset includes demographic information on 31,000 fewer lawyers than the previous report, which represents a 29% decline. NALP includes the information in a database for law students researching employers.

"Right now, with the administration's stance on anything related to DEI, there's a big concern about putting out public demographic information and even collecting that demographic information," said NALP Executive Director Nikia Gray.

NALP and Gray declined to name the firms that did not provide lawyer demographic data.

Law firm diversity and inclusion programs quickly emerged as a target during the second Trump administration. In March 2025 the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission demanded detailed hiring data from 20 major firms, including applicant names and whether race or gender influenced their employment decisions. The agency has since said it had not collected any personal information on firm employees or job applicants.

But the Trump Administration has kept up the pressure. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on January 30 warned 42 major law firms that their hiring practices may violate federal antitrust law.

Many major law firms have since publicly withdrawn or altered their public references to diversity, equity and inclusion, a Reuters special report found.

Nine law firms made deals with Trump in 2025, pledging a total of almost $1 billion in free legal work, to avoid executive orders punishing them over their past legal work and their DEI efforts. None of those nine firms immediately responded to Reuters' requests on Tuesday for comment on whether they provided lawyer diversity data to NALP.

NALP’s annual law firm diversity report is closely watched within the U.S. legal profession. While minority lawyers have steadily gained ground, whites make up 77% of all American lawyers compared with 60% of the U.S. population, according to the American Bar Association. Law firms have been a key focus among legal diversity advocates because those lawyer positions tend to be lucrative and can lead to judgeships and other influential roles.

Large law firms — those with more than 700 lawyers — accounted for a disproportionate amount of this year’s missing diversity data, NALP found. Attorneys at those firms made up 63% of the 2024 lawyer dataset, but just 56% of the 2025 count. Large firms often have the highest levels of racial and gender diversity, the NALP report noted.

With the caveat that this year’s dataset is smaller, NALP’s latest report shows that racial diversity at U.S. law firms in 2025 declined across all lawyer categories except for partners, which remained flat at 12.67%

Lawyers of color made up 30.2% of law firm associates — a 1.3-percentage-point decline from 2024. Asian and Black associates accounted for that decline, according to the report.

The proportion of summer associates of color fell 5.5 percentage points to 37.53% in 2025 — the lowest since 2020. That follows a record high of 43.7% in 2024. Summer associates are typically hired by firms full time after law school, becoming future associates and partners.

"To see such a tremendous drop in the summer associates this year is really concerning," Gray said.

Read more:

US Federal Trade Commission warns law firms about DEI hiring

US civil rights agency targets 20 big law firms with demand for DEI data