David Lat

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David Lat

David B. Lat (1975 - ) is a former assistant U.S. attorney and blogger. He wrote under the pseudonym Article III Groupie, as a woman, for the blog Underneath Their Robes until he revealed his identity in an interview with The New Yorker. Afterward he left his job as assistant U.S. attorney and joined the blog Wonkette. He now runs the legal blog Above the Law.

1 Education and legal career
2 "Underneath Their Robes"
3 Wonkette
4 External links

[edit] Education and legal career

Lat graduated from Regis High School, Harvard College, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and Yale Law School, where he served on the Yale Law Journal and was vice president of the school's chapter of the Federalist Society. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Mr. Lat then worked at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, a leading New York City law firm, for two and a half years, before joining the U.S. Attorney's office in the District of New Jersey in Newark, where he specialized in Third Circuit appeals.

[edit] "Underneath Their Robes"

In 2004, Lat anonymously started the website Underneath Their Robes (UTR), a gossip blog about the federal judiciary, under the pseudonym Article III Groupie (also known as A3G). While Lat mentioned his background as a former federal judicial clerk from a top law school, he gave the readers the impression that the author was a female lawyer at a large law firm. The blog became widely popular when it conducted a poll on the "Superhotties of the Federal Judiciary" [1], and several federal judges, including Alex Kozinski and Richard Posner, corresponded with Article III Groupie. The blog interviewed several judges and gained national media coverage in the wake of the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts, Harriet Miers, and Samuel Alito. The blog also served as a clearinghouse for news and gossip about clerks for the Supreme Court, whom A3G called "the Elect."

In November 2005, Lat revealed A3G's identity in an interview with Jeffrey Toobin for the magazine The New Yorker.[2] In the story, Lat gave an explanation for his alter ego: "[t]he blog really reflects two aspects of my personality, I am very interested in serious legal issues as well as in fun and frivolous and gossipy issues. I can go from the Harvard Law Review to Us Weekly very quickly." However, he had not informed his superiors about his site, and, within hours of the article's publication, Lat removed his blog from public view at the request of the office, without immediate explanation to the rest of the world.

The blog returned to the public in January 2006 after Lat left the U.S. Attorney's office. After a period of sporadic posting, Lat resumed posting at UTR on a fairly regular basis until September 2006. The last entry was dated September 21.

[edit] Wonkette

At the end of 2005, Lat left his job at the U.S. attorney's office.[3] He reported that the resignation was his own choice, though his supervisor encouraged him to take any blogging opportunities afforded by his new notoriety.[4] Consequently, in January 2006 Lat became an editor of popular Washington, D.C. blog Wonkette (part of the Gawker Media network), formerly run by Ana Marie Cox.[5] In June 2006, David Lat announced his decision to leave Wonkette in order to form a new law-based blog with Dealbreaker's Elizabeth Spiers.[6] In August 2006, this blog came online at abovethelaw.com.