Original Jurisdiction

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...

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 . Yesterday, Southern California Edi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com Who’s the Biglaw partner with the most star-studded client roster? Orin Snyder, co-chair of the Trials Practice Group at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, has to be up there. Consider this: at least a half-dozen of his clients have performed at the Super Bowl halftime show, in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, or both. (In cas...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com Jeannie Rhee is one of the nation’s leading litigators, with the awards and accolades to prove it—including, most recently, recognition last month from Forbes as one of America’s Top 250 Lawyers . But her legal career is not only impressive; it’s also very interesting. The past few years have been extremely eventfu...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com As Omar Little of The Wire famously quipped , “When you come at the king, you best not miss.” It’s a very true saying—and an apt title for the third book by prosecutor turned bestselling author Elie Honig, When You Come at the King: Inside DOJ’s Pursuit of the President, from Nixon to Trump . Special counsel Jack S...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com Mass-tort and multidistrict litigation is one of the most interesting and important practice areas in American law today. But even though these cases represent more than 70 percent of the federal civil docket, involving thousands of plaintiffs and billions of dollars, they don’t get as much coverage as you might ex...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com One question I frequently receive, as a lawyer turned writer, is whether I miss the practice of law. My honest answer is no. In my current job, I feel I get some of the best aspects of a legal career, such as the intellectual stimulation and challenge, without the worst ones, such as billable hours (or, for those l...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com Few lawyers in America have handled more headline-making cases than Marc Agnifilo of Agnifilo Intrater. A former prosecutor in both the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for New Jersey—where he and I met and became friends, around 20 years ago—Marc has defended a number of famous (...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded its latest Term. And over the past few weeks, the Trump administration has continued to duke it out with its adversaries in the federal courts. To tackle these topics, as well as their intersection—in terms of how well the courts, including but not limited to the Supreme...