Original Jurisdiction

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 on the button below. Thanks! Are you h...

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 on the button below. Thanks! One of th...

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 on the button below. Thanks! Because I...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com Last month, in honor of LGBTQ Pride Month, I interviewed Alejandra Caraballo, a leading advocate for transgender rights. After that episode, I heard from listeners who asked me to interview someone on the other side. As a passionate advocate of free speech and viewpoint diversity, I agreed that it would be appropri...

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 on the button below. Thanks! The Supre...

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 on the button below. Thanks! I’ve had...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com Tomorrow is the first day of June, LGBTQ Pride Month. Happy Pride! In honor of the occasion, I interviewed Alejandra Caraballo, one of the nation’s most prominent advocates for—and authorties on—transgender rights. She is a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School, where she and Anya Marino are the first transgend...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com Many readers of Original Jurisdiction, who subscribed to this newsletter because of my coverage of free-speech controversies at law schools, are deeply interested in—and firmly committed—to the First Amendment and free speech. If you’re one of these readers, then you’ll enjoy my latest podcast episode: a conversati...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com Who is the leading public intellectual of the Supreme Court bar? Neal Katyal—Hogan Lovells partner, Georgetown Law professor, and former Acting Solicitor General—would have a very strong claim to the title. Many SCOTUS advocates focus on winning high-court cases for their clients, but Neal aspires to more: he contr...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com If you’ve been defamed, and it don’t look good, who you gonna call? Clare Locke (if you can afford them). Founded in 2014 by Tom Clare and Libby Locke, who left the partnership of Kirkland & Ellis to build a plaintiff-side defamation practice free from the constraints of Biglaw, Clare Locke has become the go-to fir...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com In the last episode of this podcast, I wondered : are boutiques the future of litigation? If you’re looking to make that case, today’s guest would be a star witness. Last week, leading litigator Christopher Clark left Latham & Watkins, one of Biglaw’s biggest and best names, to launch his own boutique. Together wit...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com Are boutique firms the future of litigation? Compared to many of their Biglaw counterparts, they’re often more nimble, innovative, and willing to take risks. Unattached to giant transactional practices, they have fewer conflicts and other client-related concerns, allowing them to take on interesting, cutting-edge c...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com During my two-year detour into legal recruiting, I was struck by how many Biglaw attorneys, both associates and partners, want to make the jump to the in-house side. As a result of this keen demand, the competition for desirable corporate-counsel jobs can be fierce, with hundreds of applicants for a single opening....

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com What do you know about the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT)? Are you aware that it’s an Article III court, with life-tenured members who frequently sit by designation on circuit courts across the country? Although I fancy myself an expert on the federal courts, my knowledge of the CIT was pretty sparse until...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com In almost thirty years of following the world of U.S. legal education, from applying to law schools in fall 1995 to covering them today as a journalist, I don’t think I have seen as consequential a time as the current one. To explain the whirlwind of recent developments, I sought out two of my favorite observers of...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com Gary Feinerman served as a judge for the U.S. District Court or the Northern District of Illinois, with chambers in Chicago, from 2010 to 2022. He also served as the Solicitor General of Illinois, from 2003 until 2007, and as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. In our interview, we discussed why he left the...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit davidlat.substack.com Jeh Johnson, currently co-head of the Cybersecurity and Data Protection practice at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, has had a truly remarkable career in law and public service. Over the past four decades, he has gone back and forth between Paul Weiss, one of the nation’s leading law firms, and the federal...

I interviewed Judge Frederic Block, a federal judge in Brooklyn since 1994, about his improbable rise from Long Island solo practitioner to federal judge, the highlights of his almost 30-year judicial career, how judges should decide when it’s time to hang up their robes (he turns 89 this June), his views on the current direction of the Supreme Court, and what he REALLY thinks of former president...

I interviewed Helen Wan, author of The Partner Track—first a novel, now a hit show on Netflix. We discussed her upbringing by tiger-ish parents; her impressive career in the law, far longer than the legal careers of most lawyers turned writers; how much of The Partner Track is based on her own time at a large law firm; and the sacrifices she had to make in order to maintain a high-powered legal ca...

If you enjoyed my very first blog, Underneath Their Robes (2004-2006)—which I wrote under a pseudonym while working as a federal prosecutor, pretending to be a female associate in Biglaw obsessed with federal judges and fashion—then you’ll enjoy this latest podcast episode. How many podcasts combine analysis of Supreme Court oral arguments with discussion of pumps versus cowboy boots versus Mary J...

I spent an amazing year clerking on the Ninth Circuit for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain, who could not have been a better boss. And after speaking to numerous clerks over the years, I believe that most enjoy positive clerkship experiences like mine. When law students and young lawyers ask for my opinion on clerking, I generally recommend it (depending on the individual’s particular circumstances)....

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 on the button below. Thanks! Burying your own child is one of the most difficult experiences to endure. Burying your own c...

Depositions are a crucial part of discovery—and they can also be, in the hands of a talented litigator, torture for the witness. So I suspect that many lawyers on the left—and beyond—might be jealous right now of Roberta “Robbie” Kaplan, the iconic lawyer and founding partner of Kaplan Hecker & Fink (“KHF”). Last month, Robbie had the pleasure of deposing former president Donald Trump—not once, bu...

On the morning of July 18, 2014, Dan Markel pulled into his garage in the upscale Betton Hills neighborhood of Tallahassee, where he was a law professor at Florida State University. Seconds later, the 41-year-old father of two was shot twice in the head. Taken to the hospital, he was pronounced dead less than 12 hours later. Dan Markel was a friend of mine. We worked together as editors of the Har...

Who is the nation’s top Supreme Court advocate? If you were to poll the SCOTUS bar, many members would name Paul Clement. The 43rd Solicitor General of the United States and a veteran of over 100 arguments before the Court, he has argued more Supreme Court cases since 2000 than any lawyer in or out of government. Former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal described Clement as “the preeminent advo...