Fifty-Time Supreme Court Litigator Keeps Justices on Their Toes

Lisa Blatt isn’t afraid to tell a US Supreme Court justice they’re making stuff up, inject herself in her own hypotheticals, or talk like she’s debating friends at a bar.

During arguments on Monday alone, the Williams & Connolly partner called cheap wine “two-buck chuck” and referred to her own plastic surgeon in arguing there’s no workable line to determine what’s an impermissible gift in a public corruption case.

Next week, Blatt will return to the lectern for the 50th time. She’ll become the first woman to do so, with a casual candor and direct argument style.

But Blatt, 59, said that doesn’t come from being comfortable in court.

“I have a lot of high energy and very little filter and that’s it,” she said.

The approach is working for Blatt. She has a 41-5 win-loss record with four pending cases this term. Last year, she secured a victory for Alphabet Inc.'s Google in a fight to keep social media companies from being held liable for user content, and won a case for the maker of Jack Daniel’s in a trademark dispute over a dog toy that Blatt said “associates its whiskey with dog poop.”

It was in the same argument that she told Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson “I’m fine with you making up stuff” when the court’s newest justice suggested a cleaner way to analyze trademark law.

‘Can’t Fathom Losing’

Blatt’s take-no-prisoners approach has made her a bit of a polarizing figure at the court, some advocates say.

“She’s passionate, she’s irreverent, she’s at times bombastic, and maybe even outrageous,” said Jaime Santos, who co-chairs Goodwin Procter’s Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation Practice. “I kind of think of her as a street fighter at a Tai Chi exhibition, but I also find that really refreshing.”

Santos, who argued her first case before the justices in November, pointed to Blatt’s 2013 rebuttal in a couple’s fight to adopt a Cherokee baby girl. Blatt warned the court it would be “banning the interracial adoption of abandoned Indian children,” if it were to rule against her clients and hold that the Indian Child Welfare Act gives the baby’s biological father parental rights even though he abandoned her.

“Your decision is going to apply to the next case and to a apartment in New York City where a tribal member impregnates someone who’s African-American or Jewish or Asian Indian, and in that view, even though the father is a completely absentee father, you are rendering these women second-class citizens with inferior rights to direct their reproductive rights and who raises their child,” Blatt told the justices.

She won the case.

“I was telling my hairdresser this about how high energy I am and how I can’t fathom losing,” Blatt told Bloomberg Law in an interview. “I said to him ‘wouldn’t you want your lawyer to care about your case?’ I just try to think about if I were in trouble, what I’d want my lawyer to be like.”

Separate Identity

When Morgan Ratner was in the Solicitor General’s Office, she said attorneys would refer to Supreme Court advocates as either “heaters” or “coolers.”

Heaters take the temperatures up at argument and warn of disaster if the court rules against them. Coolers want to make it seem “easy as pie” for the court to rule in their favor, she explained.

The Sullivan & Cromwell partner, who’s argued nine cases before the court, said Blatt is a heater.

“I really respect that as someone on the cooler side,” she said. “I do not have a style that looks anything like Lisa’s and I admire her style enormously.”

But what Ratner said she appreciates most about Blatt is that she has excelled in a field dominated by men and doesn’t prescribe any one way for other women to get where she is.

“If you want to have a family or you want to have a different balance in your life, I think she stands for the idea that you can do it your way,” Ratner said.

Of the 152 arguments made this term, 53 were by women, which is unsually high. In recent terms, women advocates have appeared between 12% and 24%.

A Texas native, Blatt earned her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas. She started her career at Williams & Connolly after clerking for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was then a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

She then joined the Energy Department’s general counsel’s office before moving to the Solicitor General’s Office, where she spent 13 years as a government lawyer. She returned to private practice as a partner at Arnold & Porter and then rejoined Williams & Connolly in 2019.

In a 2020 Texas Law Review article, Blatt wrote about being called a “lady lawyer” early on in her career. Rather than being offended, she decided to own it by incorporating her identity as a woman, wife, and mother into her profession.

“In a lot of ways it’s both harder and easier being a woman,” she said in her interview with Bloomberg Law. “Very few people can say the word pornography in the Supreme Court like I can.”

In the law article, Blatt advised other women to be themselves and have passions separate from their profession. Having a separate identity has given the mom of two a level of fearlessness in a profession where she said it’s either “kill or be killed.”

“If I’m a colossal failure, I’ll move on,” she said.

After all, she said her husband, kids, and goldendoodle Jackson will still love her if she loses, so she gives it her all.

Blatt has four cases this term. In her 50th argument on Tuesday, she’ll represent Starbucks Corp. in its fight against a court order that said it has to rehire workers it fired for speaking to the media in a Memphis store after hours about unionizing efforts.

It’s a heavy caseload, which she preps for with a team from the comfort of her home in what they’ve dubbed “the Blatt Cave.” This work-from-her-home ritual started during the pandemic and stuck. David, her husband who’s also a partner at Williams & Connolly, makes sure everyone is well fed, she said.

Despite the heavy workload, Blatt’s an empty nester with both kids at Stanford Law School. This gives her some time to unwind and indulge in Korean television. She subscribes to three different Asian streaming services.

“I can’t even tell you how much Korean TV I watch,” Blatt said. “I think it’s just an escapism and it’s such a different world.”

—With assistance from Kimberly Robinson.