Ep. 14: How David Lat went from lawyer to editor and founder of Above the Law

Oct 2, 2018

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I cannot tell you guys how excited I am to have David Lat on the show! My lawyer friends will understand but to give my non-lawyer friends a bit more background, David is the editor at large and founder of Above the Law, an award-winning website about the legal profession that reaches more than 1 million unique visitors a month.

But that doesn’t really grasp the magnitude of what David has helped to create. Above the Law is THE website for anyone that works within the legal field. They cover everything from the Supreme Court decisions to what bonuses will be each year at various law firms. They have an undeniable influence on many things that happen in the legal field simply by shining a light on it.

But in order to start Above the Law, David had to leave behind his practice as an attorney. Before entering the media world, David worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, in New York; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. David graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Prior to Above the Law, he launched Underneath Their Robes, a blog about federal judges.

David’s writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, among other publications.

David first book, Supreme Ambitions: A Novel, was published in 2014.

Here is what we chat about in this episode:

Why David started his first blog, Underneath Their Robes, anonymously.
What happened after David’s identity as the blogger behind Underneath Their Robes was discovered.
Why he walked away from a prestigious legal career to pursue blogging.
How he came up with the idea for Above the Law and how he got it off the ground
How Above the Law has grown over the last 12 years
Why David stepped down as managing editor of Above the Law and what he is up to now.

Where to find David:

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