Original Jurisdiction

The rise of the management service organization (MSO) will reshape—and is already reshaping—the legal industry. In terms of important trends for the business of law, it’s up there with the rise of AI. But unlike AI, relatively few people know much about MSOs, including the basics of how they work and why they’re taking off. Trisha Rich—a longtime partner at Holland & Knight, where she leads the fi...

Within the world of legal nerds, there has been a lot of buzz lately about originalism, the theory of constitutional interpretation that calls for interpreting the Constitution based on the original public meaning of its provisions. Some of this might be due to the start of the latest Term of the U.S. Supreme Court, and some of this might be connected to the publication of Justice Samuel Alito’s n...

Earlier this month, Jaime Santos joined Proskauer Rose, making her the latest in a series of appellate advocates to switch firms in 2026. She came from Goodwin, where she practiced for more than a dozen years and served as co-head of the Supreme Court and appellate practice. What led Jaime to make the move, and what does she think is driving all the lateral hiring in the space? With a new Supreme...

Five years ago this fall, Mathew Rosengart made international headlines when he secured the termination of the 13-year conservatorship of pop icon Britney Spears. But while he might be most famous for how he helped #FreeBritney, Rosengart has litigated many major matters over the years, representing clients ranging from Hollywood celebrities like Sean Penn and Selena Gomez to multinational corpora...

Legal AI is a big deal—and a big business. How do we know this? It’s attracting interest beyond specialized, law-focused providers like Harvey and Legora (which are themselves already multibillion-dollar businesses ). Last month, Google announced Gemini Enterprise for Legal, part of the company’s growing suite of purpose-built industry solutions. But what makes this new product different from gene...

Cryptocurrency is at a critical point in its evolution. The existential questions have been answered —crypto is here to stay—and now the main issues relate to how it will be regulated (and by whom). Last year, Congress passed the GENIUS Act, landmark legislation governing a particular category of crypto called stablecoins. And when it returns from its August recess, the Senate will consider the CL...

For much of the time that I’ve been writing about the legal profession, the line between plaintiff- and defense-side litigation was clear, stable, and widely respected. Small, scrappy firms took plaintiffs’ work on contingency; large, prestigious firms defended corporations for hourly rates. That division has been eroding—slowly at first, then with increasing speed. Today, defense-oriented Biglaw...

Earlier this year, Benjamin Gruenstein left Cravath Swaine & Moore, his professional home for almost two decades, and founded his own boutique, Gruenstein Law. Ben and I first met around the time that he launched his firm, after we were introduced by a mutual friend (but not his brother, former Wachtell Lipton partner David Gruenstein , with whom I used to work). I greatly enjoyed my conversation...

Last Tuesday, June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its final opinions in argued cases for October Term 2025. So it’s an ideal time to review the Term that was—and to look ahead to what’s on the docket for OT 2026. I could think of no better guest for this project than my husband, Zachary Baron Shemtob. Zach is the executive editor of SCOTUSblog—a leading news outlet, if not the leading news outl...

Defending some of the Trump administration’s most controversial policies in court, before frequently skeptical judges, can be difficult. But Abhishek “Abhi” Kambli, who recently stepped down as deputy associate attorney general, took on this challenge—repeatedly. During 15 months at the U.S. Department of Justice, he personally argued more than 20 consequential cases, involving subjects including...

For longtime observers of the legal profession, here’s a headline we wouldn’t have expected a few years ago: “The Eight-Figure Talent Race for Supreme Court Lawyers.” According to Ryan Barber and Erin Mulvaney of The Wall Street Journal (gift link), superstar SCOTUS advocates—including former solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar, now at Cooley, and former acting SG Jeff Wall, who recently joined G...

The trend of leading litigators launching their own boutiques continues. Last month, three Chambers-ranked trial lawyers—Jessie Liu, Justin Shur, and Jonathan Kravis—left their respective firms to found Liu Shur Kravis in Washington, D.C. What makes LSK particularly interesting is that it’s a “bipartisan boutique”—unusual in D.C., where boutiques tend to have a partisan valence. Liu was the Senate...

State attorneys general have been playing an increasingly important role in American law and politics in recent years, as I discussed in my recent podcast interview of former New Jersey attorney general Matthew Platkin . Continuing the conversation on this interesting evolution, last week I interviewed Rob Bonta, the 34th attorney general of our nation’s largest state, California. We began by disc...

Artificial intelligence is transforming the practice of law in countless ways, as I’ve explored in this podcast and newsletter. Thus far, I’ve focused mainly on AI’s implications for lawyers and law firms. But how is AI affecting clients, what they expect from their firms, and the attorney-client relationship? Sabastian Niles, the president and chief legal officer of Salesforce, tackled these topi...

Sarah Isgur is one of the busiest people in legal media. She hosts the delightful Advisory Opinions podcast (on which I sometimes appear); serves as an editor of SCOTUSblog, the leading online outlet covering the Supreme Court; and appears regularly on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. And now, as of yesterday, she’s a first-time author. The thesis of Sarah’s new book— Last Branch Standi...

My latest guest is an acclaimed appellate and Supreme Court advocate, Jennifer Bennett of Gupta Wessler. To introduce her, I’m going to turn over the floor to a former podcast guest: Judge Vince Chhabria (N.D. Cal.), for whom Bennett clerked. When I mentioned to Judge Chhabria that I was going to be interviewing Jennifer, he immediately moved into testimonial mode: "Funny, I was going to email you...

I’ve interviewed many law firm leaders on this podcast, usually from one of two extremes: brand-new boutiques or long-established Biglaw institutions. But the most interesting moment in a firm’s history may be the middle—when the early bets have paid off, but the long-term trajectory is still unfolding. That’s where Glenn Agre Bergman & Fuentes is today. Founded in February 2021, in the depths of...

Over the three decades that I’ve been in and around the legal profession, one of the most interesting developments has been the rise of what I’d call “The Modern Attorney General.” Years ago, the typical state attorney general had a fairly sleepy role. Much of the job was reactive—enforcing criminal laws or defending state statutes in court—and focused on in-state developments. Today, the office l...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com Last month, Michael Gerstenzang concluded a nine-year run as managing partner of Cleary Gottlieb, one of the world’s leading law firms. During his tenure, he guided the firm through the Covid-19 pandemic, geopolitical turbulence, and the early stages of the AI transformation—an area where Cleary has emerged as an i...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com If you’re my age, you’ll recall the story of Bernhard Goetz. On a New York City subway car on December 22, 1984, Goetz shot four Black teenagers from the Bronx at point-blank range. Accused of attempted murder, Goetz went to trial—and was acquitted on the most serious charges, after claiming he acted in self-defens...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com How would you react if you saw Jack Smith, the former special counsel who prosecuted Donald Trump, at Costco? It might just happen. Last week, Jack Smith launched his own litigation boutique, along with three other former federal prosecutors: Timothy Heaphy, David Harbach, and Thomas Windom. A new law firm is like...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com Welcome to the first Original Jurisdiction podcast episode of the new year, an opportune time to both reflect on 2025 and look ahead to 2026. To kick things off, I decided I wanted to interview a Biglaw leader, to get a sense of both the challenges and opportunities facing large law firms today. I was delighted to...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com Every time you ask a question of your AI assistant, it gets sent to a data center, where the response is generated before getting sent back to you. These data centers are critical to the AI revolution. The biggest data-center campuses occupy dozens of acres, span millions of square feet, and cost billions of dollar...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com During the three-plus years that I’ve been hosting this podcast, I’ve welcomed a diverse range of guests. They’ve exhibited demographic diversity, of course, but also other forms of diversity—including diversity of opinion and experience. So I was embarrassed when I recently noticed that although I’ve interviewed m...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com Welcome to Original Jurisdiction , the latest legal publication by me, David Lat . You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page , and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here . How are the federal courts faring...