Diversity Lab Shutters After Trump Attacks Hit Funding, Work (1)

Diversity Lab, an organization focused on DEI in the legal industry, is closing after attacks from the Trump administration curtailed the group’s work.

The shuttering, confirmed Friday by a source familiar with the situation, comes nearly four months after the group said it was pausing a core diversity, equity and inclusion initiative and furloughing most staff. The group said at the time that its operating funds had been substantially depleted by the need to respond to the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump has made targeting DEI a top priority in his administration. The administration has fought a Diversity Lab initiative known as the Mansfield Rule, which encouraged law firms to include at least 30% of qualified underrepresented talent among people considered for promotions and hiring.

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 program. More than 360 law firms had participated in the Mansfield Rule program, Diversity Lab said in 2024.

“I hope today’s developments will encourage law firms to compete to hire the best talent, rather than to enter into agreements that exclude job applicants because of the applicants’ race or sex,” Ferguson said in a statement Friday.

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.