Any litigation could be very expensive, and it also is not a good look to be sued by the FTC, if you’re a law firm and you do a lot of business representing people in front of the FTC. There are real costs to these law firms for not going along. In other words, it’s a bullying move that might work.
—Vanderbilt Law School antitrust professor Rebecca Haw Allensworth speaking about the Federal Trade Commission’s warning letters to 42 Biglaw firms about their participation in Diversity Lab’s Mansfield Certification program. Though it is highly unlikely participation is such a program is anticompetitive under antitrust laws (as U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said, “The Mansfield Rule expressly does not establish any hiring quotas or other illegally discriminatory practices, requiring only that participating law firms consider attorneys from diverse backgrounds for certain positions.”), Allensworth notes that it could still scare off Biglaw.
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