About David Lat

David is a lawyer turned writer. He is the founder of Original Jurisdiction, a widely read Substack newsletter and podcast on law and legal affairs, and a columnist for Bloomberg Law. He also contributes to The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.

Prior to launching Original Jurisdiction, David founded Above the Law (“ATL”), one of the nation’s most read legal news sites, which reaches more than 1.5 million unique visitors a month. David led ATL as managing editor from 2006-2017.

His earlier online publication, which he worked on under a pseudonym while working as a federal prosecutor, Underneath Their Robes (“UTR”), garnered national attention for its coverage of federal judges. In November 2005, he revealed his identity as UTR’s author in an interview with The New Yorker magazine.

David’s first book, Supreme Ambitions: A Novel, was published in 2014 to rave reviews and according to The New York Times was, “the most buzzed-about novel of the year” within its niche audience of federal judges and law clerks.

Before entering the media world, David worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; clerked for Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; and worked as a  litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, in New York. He holds degrees from Harvard College (magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa), where he had an opinion column for the Harvard Crimson, and Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and was a finalist in the Morris Tyler Moot Court of Appeals competition.