David Lat Explained

David Lat
Birth Name:David Benjamin Lat
Birth Date:19 June 1975
Birth Place:New York City, U.S.
Education:Harvard University (BA)
Yale University (JD)
Website:Original Jurisdiction
Spouse:Zachary Baron Shemtob
Children:2

David Benjamin Lat (born June 19, 1975) is an American lawyer, author, and legal commentator. Lat is the founder of Above the Law, a website about law firms and the legal profession.

Lat attended Harvard University and Yale Law School. After law school, he worked as a law clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain, became an associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and later was an assistant U.S. attorney for the appeals division in the District of New Jersey.

Lat first began blogging anonymously for the judicial gossip blog "Underneath Their Robes," until he revealed his identity in a November 2005 interview with Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker. Shortly thereafter, Lat launched Above the Law, a website featuring news about law firms and the legal profession and legal gossip. In December 2014, Lat published his debut novel, Supreme Ambitions.

As of May 2021, Lat's main writing outlet is his Substack newsletter, Original Jurisdiction, which he describes as his "primary source of income."

Early life and education

David Lat is the son of Filipino doctors. He was born in Queens, New York.[1] He grew up in Bergenfield, New Jersey,[1] and Saddle River, New Jersey. While living in Saddle River, his neighbors included former President Richard M. Nixon. On Halloween, he would get a Halloween card and a handshake from the former president. Lat attended Regis High School in Manhattan, New York. Lat won the Villiger Tournament for extemporaneous speaking in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[2]

After high school, Lat attended Harvard University, where he studied English literature, wrote dozens of columns for The Harvard Crimson,[3] and was a member of the Harvard Speech and Parliamentary Debate Society.[4] He graduated in 1996 with a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.[5] He then attended Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and vice president of its Federalist Society chapter.[6] He graduated in 1999 with a Juris Doctor.

Legal career

After law school, Lat was a law clerk for judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1999 to 2000.[7] He interviewed for a Supreme Court clerkship with justice Antonin Scalia, but was not offered a clerkship.[8] [9] He then entered private practice at the Manhattan law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. While at Wachtell, he worked on a fight over insurance payments for the World Trade Center on behalf of Wachtell's client Larry Silverstein. One Wachtell partner noted that he seemed very unhappy in the drudgery of litigation.

After leaving Wachtell, Lat took a job in the appeals division of the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, and twice argued before Justice Samuel Alito in the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. When his blogging became public, he met with then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, who praised his blog. At the end of 2005, Lat left his job at the U.S. Attorney's office.[10] He reported that the resignation was his own choice, though his supervisor encouraged him to take any blogging opportunities afforded by his new celebrity.

Blogging

Underneath Their Robes

In June 2004, Lat anonymously started the website Underneath Their Robes (UTR), a gossip blog about the federal judiciary, under the pseudonym Article III Groupie, also known as A3G. While Lat mentioned his background as a former federal judicial clerk from a top law school, he gave the readers the impression that the author was a female lawyer at a large law firm. The blog became widely popular when it conducted a poll on the "Superhotties of the Federal Judiciary",[11] and several federal judges, including Alex Kozinski and Richard Posner, corresponded with Article III Groupie. The blog interviewed several judges and gained national media coverage in the wake of the 2005 United States Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts, Harriet Miers, and Samuel Alito. The blog also served as a clearinghouse for news and gossip about clerks for the Supreme Court, whom A3G called "the Elect."

In November 2005, Lat revealed A3G's identity in an interview with Jeffrey Toobin for the magazine The New Yorker. Lat said that "[t]he blog really reflects two aspects of my personality, I am very interested in serious legal issues as well as in fun and frivolous and gossipy issues. I can go from the Harvard Law Review to Us Weekly very quickly."[8] After leaving the U.S. Attorney's office in January 2006, Lat became an editor of Washington, D.C., blog Wonkette (at the time, part of the Gawker Media network), formerly run by Ana Marie Cox.[12]

Above the Law

In June 2006, Lat announced his decision to leave Wonkette in order to form a legal gossip blog with Dealbreaker's Elizabeth Spiers.[13] In August 2006, this blog was founded as 'Above the Law'. In July 2008, he became the managing editor of Breaking Media, overseeing its stable of blogs out of its New York office.[14] In December 2009, Lat announced that he would be returning to full-time writing and editing of Above the Law, after a new CEO and executive editor joined Breaking Media.[15]

In 2012 Lat "broke the news that one of most prestigious law firms in the world, Dewey & LeBoeuf, which employed more than 1,300 attorneys in 12 countries in 2007, was on the verge of imploding."[16] Business Insider named Lat one of the 20 biggest legal stars on Twitter, calling his Twitter feed a "treasure trove of law firm gossip, employment trends, stupid law student antics, and pretty much anything else concerning the legal industry."[17]

In May 2019, Lat left Above the Law to become a managing director of the legal recruiting firm Lateral Link, although he continues to write biweekly columns for the website.[18]

Original Jurisdiction

In December 2020, Lat launched Original Jurisdiction, a newsletter/website about law and the legal profession on the Substack platform, with an interview of prominent litigator David Boies as his first story.[19] In May 2021, Lat left Lateral Link and legal recruiting and returned to full-time writing, with Original Jurisdiction as his primary outlet.[20] [21] [22] Paid subscriptions to Original Jurisdiction now represent his primary source of income.[23]

Author and writing

Lat's writing has also appeared in various newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times,[24] [25] The Wall Street Journal,[26] The Washington Post,[27] The Los Angeles Times,[28] [29] Slate,[30] New York Magazine, The New York Observer, and Washingtonian.

In 2014, Lat published his first novel, Supreme Ambitions, to favorable reviews.[31] The novel details the rise of Audrey Coyne, a recent Yale Law School graduate who dreams of clerking for the U.S. Supreme Court, mirroring Lat's own former ambitions. After graduating from YLS, Audrey moves to the West Coast to clerk for a highly regarded appeals-court judge. According to a reviewer in The New York Times, "for an elite niche — consisting largely of federal judges and their clerks — Supreme Ambitions has become the most buzzed-about novel of the year."[32]

Personal life

Lat is gay. He is married to fellow lawyer Zachary Baron Shemtob. They were married by Judge J. Paul Oetken. Their son was born in October 2017 through a gestational surrogate.[33] [34] Lat has run the New York City Marathon twice, most recently in 2007, with a finishing time of 4:43:27.[35] He walks about 25 miles a week and engages in interval training regularly.

On March 17, 2020, Lat announced he was infected with COVID-19.[36] He was listed in critical condition, intubated in a hospital in New York City as of March 20,[37] but his condition improved substantially by March 28.[38] He was discharged from NYU Langone on April 1.[39] On April 6, 2020, he was interviewed on the Today show and The Rachel Maddow Show about his experience.[40] [41]

Lat lives in Summit, New Jersey.

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Affirmative Action Is Going Down—And It's A Good Thing Too . https://web.archive.org/web/20221102130504/https://davidlat.substack.com/p/affirmative-action-is-going-down . 2022-11-02 . live . 2022-11-01 . Original Jurisdiction . David . Lat . By the way, I was born in Queens, New York—contrary to my Wikipedia entry, which claims I was born in Bergenfield, New Jersey, which is just a town I grew up in. .
  2. Web site: March 22, 2020 . National Circuit Tournament Champions. Extemp Central.
  3. Web site: David B. Lat. Harvard Crimson.
  4. Web site: High School Students Flock to Annual Debate Tournament. Harvard Crimson.
  5. Web site: Legally Speaking Interview with David Lat. uchastings.edu.
  6. Web site: The Yale Law Journal – Masthead: Volume 108. yalelawjournal.org.
  7. Web site: Interview with David Lat . 2022-04-25 . Interviews with Max Raskin . en-US.
  8. Jeffrey . Toobin . Jeffrey Toobin . March 22, 2020 . Scotus Watch . . November 21, 2005.
  9. Web site: Lat . David . Justice Scalia And Me: A Love Story . Above the Law . June 14, 2024 . February 14, 2016.
  10. News: Jonathan . Miller . He Fought the Law. They Both Won . . January 22, 2006 . March 22, 2020.
  11. News: David A.. Kaplan . Judges: Who's Fairest? . Newsweek. July 19, 2004 . March 22, 2020.
  12. Web site: Letter From the Editors: Politics Makes Strange Blogfellows . https://web.archive.org/web/20060412222405/http://www.wonkette.com/politics/wonkette/letter-from-the-editors-politics-makes-strange-blogfellows-151416.php . April 12, 2006 . Wonkette . January 30, 2006.
  13. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/eat-the-press/2006/07/02/shakeup-at-gawker-media-_e_24258.html Shakeup At Gawker Media: Jesse Oxfeld Out; Shuffle Across Blogs; Two Properties Up For Sale
  14. Web site: David Lat Heads to New York – The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times. typepad.com.
  15. Web site: Above the Law. December 10, 2009 .
  16. News: French. Alex. How Gossip Transformed the Legal Industry. March 25, 2014. Details. December 12, 2012.
  17. News: The 20 Biggest Legal Stars On Twitter. March 25, 2014. Business Insider. Abby. Rogers. October 17, 2012.
  18. Web site: A Departure Memo, From David Lat. Lat. David. Above the Law. May 6, 2019 . en-US. December 12, 2019.
  19. Web site: What's Going On At Boies Schiller Flexner?. Lat. David. Original Jurisdiction. December 3, 2020 . en-US. December 27, 2021.
  20. Web site: 'Life Is Short. Take Chances.': David Lat Has a New Career and a New Perspective After Surviving COVID-19. Grant. Jason. American Lawyer. en-US. December 27, 2021.
  21. Web site: 'David Lat On Looking Through The Lens Of Legal Recruiting. Coe. Aebra. Law360. en-US. December 27, 2021.
  22. Web site: 'A year after his COVID-19 recovery, Above the Law founder David Lat makes some big changes. Ward. Stephanie Francis. ABA Journal. en-US. December 27, 2021.
  23. Web site: 'All Rise! An Announcement About Original Jurisdiction. Lat. David. Original Jurisdiction. May 5, 2021 . en-US. December 27, 2021.
  24. News: When $1,000 an Hour Is Not Enough . The New York Times . March 22, 2020 . October 3, 2020 . David . Lat .
  25. News: The Supreme Court's Bonus Babies . David . Lat . The New York Times . June 18, 2007 . March 22, 2020 .
  26. Web site: March 22, 2020 . Book Review: 'The Partner Track' by Helen Wan. David . Lat. October 25, 2013. Wall Street Journal .
  27. News: December 27, 2021 . Opinion - I spent six days on a ventilator with covid-19. It saved me, but my life is not the same. . David . Lat. April 9, 2020. Washington Post .
  28. Web site: December 27, 2021 . Op-Ed: People ask me if I've recovered from COVID-19. That's not an easy question to answer. David . Lat. July 9, 2020. Los Angeles Times .
  29. Web site: December 27, 2021 . Op-Ed: Biden's flurry of nominations will bring generations of diversity to federal courts. David . Lat. December 22, 2021. Los Angeles Times .
  30. Web site: December 27, 2021 . I Didn't Have to Pay a Penny of My $320,000 COVID-19 Hospital Bill. Is That a Good Thing?. David . Lat. June 8, 2020. Slate .
  31. News: Pleasing the Court with Intrigue . The New York Times . September 23, 2015. December 7, 2014. Alexandra . Alter.
  32. News: Alter. Alexandra. Pleasing the Court With Intrigue. December 7, 2014 . The New York Times. March 18, 2020.
  33. Episode 18: You Guys Are Such Dads!. In Loco Parent(i)s. Steve Vladeck and Karen Vladeck. April 22, 2021. April 22, 2021.
  34. Web site: Zach Shemtob & David Lat's Baby Registry on The Bump. registry.thebump.com. 2020-03-18.
  35. Web site: New York Road Runners Official Race Results. results.nyrr.org. 2020-04-11.
  36. DavidLat . David . Lat . 1239765732088479744 . March 17, 2020 . FYI - I have a confirmed case of #covid19 aka #coronavirus. If you interacted with me in person after 2/23, you can cite that fact and get automatically tested. Otherwise you might have to go to the ridiculous efforts I had to in order . March 22, 2020.
  37. News: David Lat Put on Ventilator, in Critical Condition With COVID-19 Infection . Jason . Grant. New York Law Journal . March 22, 2020 . March 21, 2020.
  38. News: David Lat Transferred Out of ICU, Taken Off Ventilator in Coronavirus Fight . National Law Journal . Jason . Grant . March 29, 2020 . March 30, 2020.
  39. News: Above the Law founder David Lat is being discharged after COVID-19 battle. Weiss. Debra Cassens. ABA Journal. April 2, 2020. April 4, 2020.
  40. Web site: Man who survived a week on a ventilator tells his coronavirus story . Today.com . April 7, 2020 . April 6, 2020.
  41. Web site: COVID-19 TRANSCRIPT: 4/6/20, The Rachel Maddow Show . msnbc.com . April 7, 2020 . April 6, 2020.