David Lat is one of the nation’s leading legal journalists. He publishes Original Jurisdiction, a widely read, highly influential Substack newsletter about law and legal affairs. It is one of Substack’s top-ranked publications in the Business category, with more than 3,000 paid subscribers and 22,000 total subscribers.

Before launching Original Jurisdiction, David founded Above the Law (“ATL”), one of the largest legal news websites in the United States, which receives approximately two million unique visitors a month. He served as managing editor of ATL from 2006 until 2017, during which time the site received multiple awards, including recognition by the Weblog Awards (Best Law Blog), the ABA Journal Blawg 100 (Best News Blog), and the Webby Awards (Official Honoree).

Today Above the Law, a multimillion-dollar business, employs around a dozen full-time employees and a few dozen outside columnists, including prominent lawyers, legal academics, legal technologists, and other thought leaders in the world of law. It is owned by Breaking Media, a network of websites, e-newsletters, and social-media channels for influential, affluent business communities.

Prior to starting ATL out of his D.C. apartment in the summer of 2006, David founded Underneath Their Robes (“UTR”), a prominent blog about federal judges that he wrote under a pseudonym while practicing as a federal prosecutor, until he revealed his identity as UTR’s author to the The New Yorker magazine. He also served as co-editor of the political blog Wonkette.

In addition to publishing Original Jurisdiction, David writes a column for Bloomberg Law, which appears every other Wednesday. His work has also appeared in newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Observer (where he was a columnist), and magazines, including Esquire, New York, and Washingtonian (for which he co-authored an award-winning cover story in December 2009). He has also written for academic publications such as the Yale Law Journal, Vanderbilt Law Review, and Tennessee Law Review.

If you would like to discuss a possible writing project with David, please contact him. Links to selected writings of his appear below.

Blogging/Online Writing

• Original Jurisdiction (2020-present)
• Bloomberg Law (2023-present)
• Above the Law (2006-2020)
• Underneath Their Robes (2004-2014)

Opinion/Op-Eds

• Don’t Overlook the Power of the Civil Cases Against Donald Trump, New York Times, April 1, 2024 (co-authored with Zachary B. Shemtob)
• Judicial Ethics in a Populist Age, The Atlantic, September 27, 2023 (co-authored with Zachary B. Shemtob)
• Trump’s Supreme Court Picks Are Not Quite What You Think, New York Times, February 12, 2023 (co-authored with Zachary B. Shemtob)
• Big Law’s Cancel Culture, Boston Globe, January 30, 2023
• Why Six Top-Ranked Law Schools Left U.S. News in the Dust This Week, Slate, November 19, 2022
• Notable & Quotable: Diversity, Wall Street Journal, November 5, 2022
• Now Roe. What’s Next?, Esquire, June 2022
• I nearly died from COVID. Now I’m letting go of the fear, Los Angeles Times, March 16, 2022
• Biden’s flurry of nominations will bring generations of diversity to federal courts, Los Angeles Times, December 22, 2021
• Federal Courts Aren’t Royal Ones, Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2021 (co-authored with Laurie Lin)
• I Didn’t Have to Pay a Penny of My $320,000 COVID-19 Hospital Bill. Is That a Good Thing?, Slate, June 8, 2020
• People ask me if I’ve recovered from COVID-19. That’s not an easy question to answer, Los Angeles Times, July 9, 2020
• Don’t like the Wisconsin election mess? Don’t blame the courts, Washington Post, April 11, 2020 (co-authored with George T. Conway III)
• I spent six days on a ventilator with covid-19. It saved me, but my life is not the same, Washington Post, April 9, 2020
• Delay the Vote — for Kavanaugh, for His Accuser and for the Court, New York Times, September 16, 2018
• Good Riddance to Blue Slips, New York Times, May 9, 2018
• Give Amnesty for College Writings, Wall Street Journal, April 15, 2018
• Peter Thiel had no reason to be angry at Gawker, Washington Post, May 27, 2016
• Comments are making the internet worse — so we got rid of them, Washington Post, April 21, 2016
• Executions Should Be Televised, New York Times, July 29, 2011 (co-authored with Zachary B. Shemtob)
• Justice Clarence Thomas seems bored. Why doesn’t he run for president in 2012?, Washington Post, June 13, 2010 (co-authored with Kashmir Hill)
• 5 myths about Supreme Court confirmations, Washington Post, May 10, 2010 (co-authored with Kashmir Hill)
• The Supreme Court’s Bonus Babies, New York Times, June 18, 2007
• New York Observer column, 2007-2008

News Articles / Reported Essays

• How Two Men Make a Baby, Esquire, June 2016
• Online Games Aim to Teach Kids About Courts, Washington Post, October 4, 2009 (co-authored with Kashmir Hill)
• When $1,000 an Hour Is Not Enough, New York Times, October 3, 2007

Book Reviews

• Two High-Powered Black Attorneys Confront a Justice System’s Flaws, front-page review of Just Pursuit by Laura Coates and The Rage of Innocence by Kristin Henning, New York Times, January 16, 2022
• How Tough-on-Crime Prosecutors Contribute to Mass Incarceration, front-page review of Charged by Emily Bazelon, New York Times, April 14, 2019
• War Powers, review of Allegiance by Kermit Roosevelt, Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2015
• The Good Lawyer, review of The Good Lawyer by Douglas O. Linder and Nancy Levit, Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2014
• The Partner Track, review of The Partner Track by Helen Wan, Wall Street Journal, October 25, 2013
• A Few Good Defense Lawyers, review of Mistrial by Mark Geragos and Pat Harris, Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2013
• Way Better Than Briefs: Legal Minds Turn to Blogs, review of Anonymous Lawyer by Jeremy Blachman, New York Observer, August 28, 2006

Academic Writings

• How Should a Judge Be: In Defense of the Judge as CEO, Vanderbilt Law Review, April 2016
• Public Figurehood in the Digital Age, Journal of Telecommunications and High Technology Law, August 2011 (co-authored with Zachary B. Shemtob)
• The Execution Should Be Televised: An Amendment Making Executions Public, Tennessee Law Review, April 2011 (co-authored with Zachary B. Shemtob)
• Sentencing and the Fifth Amendment, Yale Law Journal, June 1998

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