Above the Law's David Lat taking a break from 'the trenches' of daily journalism
David Lat
David Lat is stepping down as managing editor of Above the Law after a change in his personal life.
Lat and his husband are the parents of a baby boy. “As a parent and primary caregiver,” he writes at Above the Law, “I’d like to take a break from being ‘in the trenches’ of daily journalism.”
Lat will be on parental leave until mid-December or early January and will begin contributing after that in his new position of editor at large.
“In my new role,” he writes, “I will return to the work that I love, the work that led me to leave my legal career for the media world: writing and reporting. I will work on long-form pieces, features, profiles and other stories made possible by my unique knowledge of, and connections within, the legal profession.
“I will also work on selected business-side projects, including pitches, special projects and custom content for Above the Law advertisers and partners. At the same time, I will no longer be involved in the day-to-day administrative work associated with running the nation’s largest single legal news site.”
Elie Mystal, who has been an editor at Above the Law since 2008, will become executive editor of the blog.
Lat was named an ABA Journal Legal Rebel in 2009. He created his first blog, Underneath Their Robes, while he was a federal prosecutor in New Jersey. He wrote anonymously as “Article III Groupie,” creating a “male superhotties of the federal judiciary” contest, before he revealed his identity in 2005.
He resigned from the U.S. Attorney’s office a few months later and edited the gossip blog Wonkette before creating Above the Law. He has also written a novel, published by the ABA, about a Yale law grad who clerks for an ambitious federal appeals judge.
Updated at 11:40 a.m. to note that Mystal had been an editor at Above the Law since 2008.
