David Lat, "Supreme Ambitions: Jurisdiction, Gender, Judging"

With Commentary by Professor Alison LaCroix

David Lat is the founder and managing editor 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 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 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 2014, Mr. Lat published his debut novel, Supreme Ambitions available at bit.ly/SupremeAmbitions.

Alison LaCroix is Professor of Law and Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Teaching Scholar at the Law School. She is also an associate member of the University of Chicago Department of History. LaCroix received her BA summa cum laude in history from Yale University in 1996 and her JD from Yale Law School in 1999. She received her PhD in history from Harvard University in 2007 after earning an AM in history from Harvard in 2003. While in law school, LaCroix served as essays editor of the Yale Law Journal and managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities. From 1999 to 2001, she practiced in the litigation department at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York. Before joining the Law School faculty in 2006, she was a Samuel I. Golieb Fellow in Legal History at New York University School of Law.

Presented by APALSA, The Law Women’s Caucus, and The Federalist Society on February 12, 2015.