The decades-long relationship between Kathleen Hartnett, the co-head of issues & appeals practice Cooley, and her pro bono client Nakia Roy has gone from attorney-client to friendship and back again as Hartnett has moved in-and-out of government service. Hartnett told me yesterday it goes back so far that she can no longer access some of her first correspondence with Roy: They’re in WordPerfect files. 

Hartnett first represented Roy in 2003 when she was an associate at Jenner & Block, fresh off a six-week stint at Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. Friends in the PDS called her when the office was conflicted out of the direct appeal of Roy’s second-degree murder conviction. Roy was already in prison serving 25 years plus 180 days to life—effectively a life sentence since he’d need approval from the U.S. Parole Commission for release.