Lawyerly Lairs: Million-Dollar Listings in Washington, D.C.

Partners pick up palatial pads in the nation's capital. What can you get for more than $1.5 million?

A few days ago, conservative political bloggers had some fun with the news of left-leaning commentator Matthew Yglesias buying a $1.2 million condo. But I tend to agree with Jonathan Chait: unless you’re a full-blown communist, there’s nothing inconsistent between being somewhat liberal and owning a nice place. I don’t even have a problem with so-called “limousine liberals” (although owning a $1.2 million apartment is hardly limousine land).

The news of Yglesias’s real estate purchase first appeared in Washingtonian magazine, which has fantastic coverage of the D.C. real estate market. The same column also contained news of several lawyers cutting seven-figure housing deals….

This was the biggest deal involving legal eagles that appeared in the Washingtonian article:

Security expert Michael Leiter and lawyer Alice Leiter bought a six-bedroom, five-bath Victorian on Chain Bridge Road in Kent for $2.6 million. Across from Battery Kemble Park, the renovated house has a shared tennis court and pool. Leiter, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, is a senior counselor at the software firm Palantir Technologies and a national-security analyst at NBC News. Alice Leiter is policy counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology, where she specializes in health-information technology.

Michael Leiter is a lawyer too — a Harvard Law School graduate and former Supreme Court clerk (to Justice Stephen Breyer). He’s also a 1987 graduate of Dwight-Englewood School, which is where I went for junior high school. Alice Leiter (née Alice Brown) is a Georgetown Law grad and daughter of a Milbank partner, Winthrop Brown.

If this all sounds familiar to you, it should. Back in June 2011, Michael and Alice Leiter prevailed in Legal Eagle Wedding Watch.

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Considering that it cost $2.6 million, the house doesn’t look that impressive from the front:

But the interior is pretty amazing….

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