A quiet unraveling is happening in the legal profession. DEI programs are being forced underground or dismantled. Affinity groups have gone silent. Words like “belonging” and “inclusion,” once so benign, are too politicized to appear on websites and internal memos. In the face of legal threats and cultural pushback, many organizations are retreating—and in doing so, they’re revealing something deeper many of us knew all along: perhaps the commitment wasn’t as rooted as we thought.
This moment should give us pause. Not just because of what it signals for historically excluded lawyers, but because of what it exposes about the profession as a whole. If DEI can be easily abandoned, and well-being relegated to optional programming, we must ask: What exactly is law for?