Diversity Lab Shutters After Trump Attacks Hit Funding, Programs

Diversity Lab is closing, months after the organization focused on DEI in the legal industry put a key program on hiatus because of attacks from the Trump administration.

The group’s shuttering, confirmed by a source familiar with the situation, comes nearly four months after the group said it was pausing one of its core diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and furloughing most of the staff. The initiative, known as the Mansfield Rule, encouraged law firms to include at least 30% of qualified underrepresented talent among people considered for promotions and hiring.

President Donald Trump has made targeting DEI a top priority in his administration. Federal Trade Commission chairman Andrew Ferguson in a Jan. 30 letter to more than 40 Big Law firms warned them over their participation in the Mansfield Rule. More than 360 law firms had participated in the initiative, Diversity Lab said in 2024.

The administration also targeted the Mansfield Rule during the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s March 2025 probe into law firms’ participation in diversity programs and fellowships. Goodwin Procter told the EEOC it planned to end its participation in the Mansfield Rule last year.

US District Judge Beryl Howell in Perkins Coie’s litigation over a Trump executive order stated last year that the Mansfield rule does not run afoul of discrimination laws. The Justice Department’s then lawyer, Richard Lawson, said in an April 2025 hearing that firms’ DEI work unlawfully stereotypes people and that initiatives such as the Mansfield Rule are unconstitutional in the government’s view.

Diversity Lab was founded in 2013 to create programs to encourage the hiring and retention of minorities in the legal profession. It said at the time it paused the Mansfield Rule that its operating funds had been substantially depleted by the need to respond to executive orders, DOJ law-firm lawsuits, and EEOC letters to law firms.