From Lawyer To Blogger To Novelist: An Interview With David Lat, Author Of Supreme Ambitions

According to the New York Times, "for an elite niche," Supreme Ambitions "has become the most buzzed-about novel of the year."

I am a huge fan and avid reader of legal fiction. I review law-related novels for the Wall Street Journal, and here at Above the Law we sometimes interview lawyers turned novelists (see, e.g., Tara Conklin, Justin Peacock, Allison Leotta, and Helen Wan).

I am now pleased and proud to join the ranks of these lawyer-novelists. My debut novel, Supreme Ambitions, is finally out. It’s being published by Ankerwycke, the new trade-publishing imprint of the American Bar Association dedicated to publishing fiction and accessible non-fiction (or at least more accessible than, say, an ERISA treatise or practice management handbook).

In a piece in today’s New York Times, Alexandra Alter writes that “for an elite niche — consisting largely of federal judges and their clerks — Supreme Ambitions has become the most buzzed-about novel of the year.” The book has received positive reviews and praise from the National Law Journal (Tony Mauro), the New York Law Journal (Rosemarie Yu), and the Volokh Conspiracy/Washington Post (Will Baude and Ilya Somin), among other outlets. I’ve collected these testimonials, along with blurbs from Judge Richard Posner, Judge Alex Kozinski, and Judge Richard Kopf, on the official book website.

When I mentioned my forthcoming novel on Facebook a while back, one friend and longtime reader said, “Lat — you interview lawyers turned novelists — why don’t you interview yourself?” Clever idea! So here goes.

DL: So, Lat… you’re that lawyer turned blogger guy, right?

You’re doing it wrong. That does not sound like the Lat I know. Try again.

DL [Clears throat, closes eyes, opens eyes, starts again — in a breathless, sycophantic tone.]: David Lat, you had a glittering legal résumé: Harvard College; Yale Law School, where you served on the Yale Law Journal; a clerkship with a prominent feeder judge, Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain of the Ninth Circuit; Wachtell Lipton, arguably the nation’s #1 Biglaw firm; and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. And you left it all behind to become… a blogger?

Well, Above the Law is so much more than a “blog” today. ATL has four full-time writer-editors, a half-dozen other employees, and more than 20 outside columnists. We offer industry news, analysis, humor, gossip, career advice, closely followed rankings of law firms and law schools….

DL: But when you started ATL more than 8 years ago, back in 2006, wasn’t it really just a blog?

Well, yes, it was certainly a more blog-like thing….

DL: And in terms of how you made the jump from practicing law to writing about it, wasn’t that through blogging as well?

Yes — through Underneath Their Robes, a cheeky judicial gossip blog that I wrote under a pseudonym. I pretended to be a female associate at a law firm who was obsessed with federal judges when in reality I was a male federal prosecutor who was obsessed with federal judges. To learn about how I turned that secret sideline into what is now Above the Law, I refer you to prior pieces about me in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Details magazine.

DL: Okay, let’s turn to the book. Why did you decide to write Supreme Ambitions?

I majored in English as an undergraduate, and I have a longstanding love for fiction. Writing a book was on the bucket list for me. Many lawyers and law professors I know are aspiring or actual fiction writers on the side.

DL: That explains why you’d want to write A book. Why this particular book?

As I explained to Tony Mauro of the National Law Journal, I loved my clerkship with Judge O’Scannlain — it was the best legal job I ever held, even if Wachtell paid a lot better — and part of me wanted to relive the clerkship, in a way:

I wrote the novel partly to try and recapture that clerk experience and get back into that headspace. I wanted to explore the fascinating mindset of the young law clerk: the vacillation between confidence and insecurity, between innocence and experience, between channeling someone else—your judge—and finding your own professional identity.

Also, as I told the New York Times, “I wanted to write for my people. People who are reading this are people steeped in the world of appellate courts.”

In a certain sense, “my people” are the former readers of Underneath Their Robes — the legal nerds and judicial groupies who enjoy ATL but don’t adore it as much as they did UTR. As Scott Greenfield put it, “For anyone who remembers the early days of Underneath Their Robes, when A3G obsessed over whether judicial hotties wore boxers or briefs, or the glory days of Above The Law, when it was just David Lat, having outed himself with Jeffrey Toobin as one of Chris Christie’s male Jersey federales, his first novel, Supreme Ambitions, will bring back the glow of what made Lat stand out above all others.”

DL: I can see how this novel — the story of a young Ninth Circuit clerk who wants to clerk on the Supreme Court, and her powerful boss, a Ninth Circuit judge who wants to sit on the Supreme Court — might appeal to Underneath Their Robes readers. But let’s say I’m a young lawyer or law student with no interest in clerking — a corporate associate at a Biglaw firm, say. Would I still like this book?

Yes — or so I like to think. The book’s themes — ambition, prestige, law versus politics, gender in the legal profession, a young person’s search for a sense of self — are universal. Again, as I told Tony Mauro, “I hope that the book will resonate not just with law clerks and young lawyers… but also with anyone who has ever been 25 years old and struggling to figure out their place in the world.”

DL: Lawyers are avid readers, but some of them stick to non-fiction. Supreme Ambitions is fiction — the first work of fiction being published by the ABA’s new Ankerwycke imprint. Let’s say I’m a non-fiction kind of guy. Why would I want to read your novel?

As Judge Richard Kopf put it in his review, “The novel is more about truth than fiction. This is legal realism at its finest.” As the Times put it in its article about Supreme Ambitions and Ankerwycke, “Mr. Lat and the American Bar Association are betting that there are readers for a subgenre of highly realistic, legal procedural fiction that’s heavy on the legal material.”

To put it another way: when it comes to books, if you like your reality, you can keep your reality. I did a lot of legal research in the course of writing this book to make it read as realistically as possible.

DL: Let’s say that, well, I’m not really that into reading books, period. Why should I buy Supreme Ambitions?

I am grateful to everyone who buys the book, whether they read it immediately, a few months from now, a few years from now, or never. Above the Law has never charged its users any kind of subscription fee, and we don’t see that changing anytime soon. But if you’d like to express your gratitude for anything that ATL has ever done for you over the years — bonus or salary coverage, a story that made you laugh during a late night at the office, the delight of our annual Law Revue contest, an employment opportunity you snagged through our job board — please feel free to buy the book (affiliate link, meaning that ATL gets a cut of the revenue).

If you then take the book and use it to prop up the wobbly leg on your kitchen table, I won’t be offended. I love it when people read and enjoy Supreme Ambitions, but I also know that life is short and folks are busy. If you want to buy the book just as a show of support and never crack it open, you still have my deepest thanks. You can also buy it as a holiday gift for a friend or loved one who would enjoy it, like someone who clerked who would be interested in clerking.

If anyone out there has a book-related question for me — you work for a news outlet and would like a review copy or an interview, you are interested in possibly hosting a Supreme Ambitions event (here’s my current calendar of events and public appearances) — please email me at the book email account.

DL: Congratulations on the publication of Supreme Ambitions and all the great reviews. I wish you the best of luck in promoting it!

Of course you do — you’re me! Thanks to you, David Lat, for taking the time to chat.

Pleasing the Court With Intrigue [New York Times]
Supreme Ambitions [Amazon (affiliate link)]