David Benjamin Lat (born June 19, 1975) is an American lawyer, author, and legal commentator. Lat is the founder of Above the Law, a website about law firms and the legal profession. Before blogging, Lat attended Harvard College and Yale Law School. After law school, he worked as a law clerk for a federal appeals judge (Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain), an associate at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, and an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the appeals division in the District of New Jersey. Lat first began blogging anonymously for the judicial gossip blog "Underneath Their Robes," until he revealed his identity in a November 2005 interview with Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker. Shortly thereafter, Lat launched Above the Law, a website featuring news about law firms and the legal profession and legal gossip. In December 2014, Lat published his debut novel, Supreme Ambitions. As of May 2021, Lat's main writing outlet is his Substack newsletter, Original Jurisdiction, which he describes as his "primary source of income." Early life and education David Lat is the son of Filipino doctors. He was born in Queens, New York. He grew up in Bergenfield, New Jersey, and Saddle River, New Jersey. While living in Saddle River, his neighbors included former President Richard M. Nixon. On Halloween, he would get a Halloween card and a handshake from the former president. Lat attended Regis High School in Manhattan, New York. Lat won the Villiger Tournament for extemporaneous speaking in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he studied English, wrote dozens of columns for the Harvard Crimson, and was a member of the Harvard Speech and Parliamentary Debate Society. He earned a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, graduating in 1996. He attended Yale Law School, where he was vice president of the Federalist Society. Lat was a member of the Yale Law Journal, where he was a Book Reviews Editor. Legal career After law school, he went on to work as a judicial law clerk for a federal appeals court judge in Portland, Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, during the 1999–2000 judicial year. After his clerkship, he went on to a job at the Manhattan firm Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz. While at Wachtell, he worked on a fight over insurance payments for the World Trade Center on behalf of Wachtell's client Larry Silverstein. One Wachtell partner