Diversity, equity, and inclusion policies may only look dead in corporate America, as high-priced racial equity audits of companies have become a lucrative industry for Democrat-leaning law firms, a watchdog group noted.
Two former attorneys general in the Obama administration—Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch—are now leading their respective law firms’ efforts on racial equity audits. Holder is a partner with the firm Covington & Burling. Lynch is the chairwoman of civil rights and racial equity audits at the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.
The National Legal and Policy Center noted the boon for the major law firms as the White House released a report examining the economic impact of DEI policies.
“Behind the scenes, DEI is not really dead. It’s more under the radar now, but many corporate executives are true believers,” Paul Chesser, director of the Corporate Integrity Project at the National Legal and Policy Center, told The Daily Signal. “We’ve gone from grassroots rabble-rousers like Al Sharpton shaking down companies to white-shoe law firms run by former attorneys general.”
An NLPC analysis this week found that Holder was reportedly paid $2,295 per hour for a string of racial equity audits that began in 2021 at companies including Starbucks, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Verizon, and Uber.
Lynch’s firm, Paul Weiss, touted being “possibly the nation’s first dedicated legal team focused on conducting racial equity and other civil rights audits,” conducting audits of Amazon and Chevron.
Another prominent firm, WilmerHale, also conducted racial equity audits of McDonald’s, Google, Home Depot, and Goldman Sachs, according to the NLPC.
The three law firms did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Two of the corporations identified by the NLPC as paying for the audits told the Daily Signal they had no comment; others did not respond to requests for comment.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers released a report this week assessing companies that focused on DEI-based promotions, and it found they were 2.7% less productive. It also found promotions of minorities to management positions were four times higher from 2015 to 2023 than they were from 2005 to 2015. The study determined industries that focused heavily on DEI promotions experienced lower productivity.
The White House report says, “These estimates imply that DEI promotion has led to inefficient management, raising the cost of doing business. These costs lead the companies practicing DEI to hire fewer people and pay their workers less.”
While the racial equity audits have died down, the divisions of the law firms are still running, so the industry could boom again when political winds change, Chesser said.
Corporations frequently presented these audits as independent, objective reviews, but the National Legal and Policy Center contends the big fees effectively bought access to “homogeneous Democratic law firms.”
The NLPC points to a 2025 analysis by Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller of law firms’ political donations in the 2024 election cycle. The analysis found that Covington employees donated more than $1 million to Democrat-affiliated organizations and candidates, compared with just $9,053 to Republicans.
The same analysis found Paul Weiss employees spent $3.8 million on Democrat causes and candidates and $132,495 on Republican-affiliated candidates and causes.
“A number of companies have already capitulated and will likely illustrate cowardice again if there is a little social media pressure,” Chesser said. “These are multibillion-dollar companies. They can pay a few million dollars to make a problem go away.”
