#026: David Lat - Legal Commentator

In this episode I speak with legal commentator David Lat. For more than a decade David has been one of the country's foremost legal commentators and legal bloggers. He started his legal blogging career with the blog Underneath Their Robes where he wrote about the federal judiciary pseudonymously. He then went on to found Above the Law (one the country's most well-known legal media blogs) which he led for more than ten years. After a brief period working in legal recruiting, David recently returned to writing about law and the legal profession full-time with his newsletter Original Jurisdiction (davidlat.substack.com). 

David started his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain (9th Circuit). He then worked as an associate at Wachtell and as an Assistant United States Attorney in New Jersey before shifting to a full-time career writing about the law. 

In our conversation we discuss the his path to becoming a legal blogger; the importance of finding the intersection of what you like to do, what you are good at, and what your experience makes you uniquely qualified to do; some of his favorite Above the Law stories; and how lawyers can (and should) promote themselves and their work on the internet.

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