Kathleen Zellner born May 7 is an American attorney who has worked extensively in wrongful conviction advocacy. Notable clients Zellner has represented include Steven Avery, Kevin Fox, and 19 exonerees who are listed in the National Registry of Exonerations.
Kathleen Zellner was born in Midland, Texas, the second-oldest of seven children. Her father Owen Thomas was a geologist, and her mother Winifred was a chemist who became a nurse. When she was nine years old, she and her family moved to small-town Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Her siblings are psychologists and lawyers. She attended Marquette University in Wisconsin, and then the University of Missouri, before graduating with a B.A. from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. She received her J.D. degree from the Northern Illinois University College of Law in 1981, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review, and clerked for 2nd District Illinois Appellate Court justice George W. Lindberg. Her husband Robert Zellner is a commodities and bond trader with a doctorate in economics. They have a daughter named Anne, who is also a lawyer, in Nevada.
Exonerations
She opened her firm, Kathleen T. Zellner & Associates in Downers Grove, Illinois, in 1991. Her firm handles wrongful conviction cases, civil rights violations, medical malpractice, and prisoner abuse cases. Zellner had achieved 19 exonerations as of October 2018, and now 20 exonerations for clients. Notable clients Zellner has represented include Steven Avery, Kevin Fox, and 19 exonerees who are listed in the National Registry of Exonerations. Newsweek reported that a lawyer said that facing her at trial was "worse than my divorce."
Civil verdicts
As of March 2016 she had won almost $90 million from wrongful conviction and medical malpractice lawsuits. In 2000, The National Law Journal named Zellner a top ten trial lawyer in the United States for a suicide malpractice verdict of $13 million. She also won a $15.5 million verdict for the violation of Kevin Fox's civil rights in 2007, an $11 million verdict for Ryan W. Ferguson in Missouri who had served 10 years in jail, and a $9 million civil rights verdict for Ray Spencer in Washington in 2014. In 2012, she won the American Bar Association "Pursuit of Justice" Award.
