From Law Student To Lawyer To Host Of The 'Today' Show: An Interview With Savannah Guthrie

Georgetown Law, the highest score on the Arizona bar exam, Biglaw, a prestigious clerkship—all of which she left behind, to pursue a very different dream.

Savannah Guthrie (Photo courtesy of NBC News)

Ed. note: This column originally appeared on Original Jurisdiction, the latest Substack publication from David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction on its About page, and you can subscribe through this signup page.

One year ago this month, Today Show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie took apart then-president Donald Trump on national television. During a town hall that NBC News sponsored in lieu of a debate, a controversial decision at the time, Guthrie patiently and persistently asked tough questions of Trump. When it was all over, his appearance was panned and hers was praised, with Kate McKinnon of Saturday Night Live referring to Guthrie as a “surprise badass.

But Guthrie’s bravura performance should have come as no surprise. Although morning shows like Today can be fluffy, with their celebrity interviews and cooking segments—s’mores cream pie, anyone?—Guthrie is a veteran journalist with a hard-news background. Before joining Today in 2011, she racked up more than a decade in local and national news, covering everything from the Martha Stewart trial to Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential campaign to the Obama White House.

Here’s the other reason I wasn’t surprised by Guthrie treating Trump like a hapless witness during cross-examination: she’s a lawyer by training. After graduating from Georgetown Law, magna cum laude and Order of the Coif, she worked at Akin Gump, then scored an offer for a federal judicial clerkship—which she turned down to pursue her news career. Her career in the law, while not long, was impressive.

Earlier this month, not long after Guthrie’s grilling of Trump won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Live Interview, I had the pleasure of interviewing her about this less well-known part of her background. We spoke for almost half an hour via Zoom after a taping of Today (in which she interviewed William Shatner, 90, about his recent trip to outer space, among other things). Still wearing her make-up, she sipped periodically from a giant bottle of Pellegrino as we discussed her journey from law student to lawyer to host of Today.

As co-anchor of the Today Show, Savannah Guthrie has what is a dream job for many. She meets and interviews some of the most important and interesting people in the world. She’s famous, beamed into the houses of more than three million people every day. She’s paid very nicely for her work, better than most Biglaw partners. How did she get here?

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Continue reading over at Original Jurisdiction…


David Lat, the founding editor of Above the Law, is a writer and speaker about law and legal affairs. You can read his latest writing about law and the legal profession by subscribing to Original Jurisdiction, his Substack newsletter. David’s book, Supreme Ambitions: A Novel (2014), was described by the New York Times as “the most buzzed-about novel of the year” among legal elites. Before entering the media and recruiting worlds, David worked as a federal prosecutor, a litigation associate at Wachtell Lipton, and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at davidlat@substack.com.

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