For over a decade, Simpson Thacher has supported the Legal Outreach Program, a non-profit organization that prepares urban youth from underserved communities to compete at high levels through intensive legal and educational programs. The Firm also participates in the Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO) program by hiring several SEO interns each summer. Other programs include the Albert G. Oliver Program which helps minority youth and their families gain access to first-tier preparatory schools, the Thurgood Marshall Summer Law internship, the Inner-City Scholarship Job Opportunities Program and the Youth Employment Summer (YES) program. Simpson Thacher has worked with several New York City public schools and provides student internships each year. In fact, Simpson Thacher has provided internships to over 350 high school and college students.

Simpson Thacher frequently hosts events to further promote diversity and inclusion. For example, in 2009, the Firm hosted a talk by Ken Choe, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU entitled, “Marriage for Same-Sex Couples: The Landscape after Proposition 8, Iowa, Vermont and Maine.”

Our offices outside of New York continue this tradition and are active in their communities. In Los Angeles, for example, partners serve on important committees of Public Counsel and Bet Tzedek, two large pro bono law firms that provide free legal services. Each year, associates and summer associates from the office participate in training and provide services and outreach to their clients. We also hire interns from local high schools through the Constitutional Rights Foundation summer internship program. One alumnus of that internship is now attending law school. We serve as pro bono legal counsel to AIDS Project Los Angeles, which serves people with AIDS and HIV. In London, for each of the past two years, we have hosted a high school student gaining work experience and exposure to our working environment through the Social Mobility Foundation.  In Washington, D.C., Simpson Thacher lawyers are working closely with the National Law Center for Homelessness and Poverty on a project to require the Department of Housing and Urban Development to issue new rules ensuring better implementation of the Violence Against Women Act. In addition, the office has supported a variety of pro bono organizations including Equal Justice Under Law, the National Women's Law Center, and the International Women's Human Rights Clinic at Georgetown University Law School. In the spring of 2009, over a dozen attorneys in our Palo Alto office coached middle school students participating in the Citizens’ Schools Program in California for the San Jose regional mock trial.

Our attorneys serve on many bar association committees, such as the New York City Bar Association’s Executive Committee, its Committee on Women in the Profession, its Committee to Enhance Diversity in the Profession (which was originally chaired by Simpson Thacher partner Cyrus Vance), its Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights, its Committee on Nonprofit Organizations and its Minorities in the Courts Committee , which is chaired by one of our associates.

Simpson Thacher attorneys serve on Boards of Directors and Advisors for a variety of organizations including Legal Outreach, AIDS Project Los Angeles, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, New Visions for Public Schools, the Robin Hood Foundation, the Nigerian Lawyers Association, the Natural Resources Defense Council, inMotion (Junior Advisory Board), and Legal Momentum.