Jenner & Block’s Katya Jestin stresses relationship building when trying cases
Katya Jestin, a partner at Jenner & Block, willingly acknowledges the two women who influenced her decision to go into law: her mother, who was a practicing lawyer, and Nancy Drew.
In Dallas, where she grew up, her mother, Susan Mead, worked on impacting the city’s zoning and planning laws.
“One of my first memories,” Jestin recalls, “is walking around a neighborhood in Dallas and getting petitions signed to stop the state from building a highway through a low-income neighborhood.”
She refers to her mom as “a frus- trated architect” who worked at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The highway plans would have mowed down the dynamics of a beautiful neighborhood with historic buildings and families.
“So that was the kind of lawyer she was,” Jestin says.
As for Nancy Drew, she’s read every single book—twice.“And I so loved the idea of solving crimes,” says Jestin, who serves as co-chair of the firm’s Investigations, Compliance and Defense Practice. She previously served as the firm’s co- managing partner.
And so Jestin’s own journey into the legal profession unfolded like a blueprint. She studied philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin and actually thinks liberal arts studies can help aspiring lawyers develop brain analytics. She later graduated from Georgetown University Law Center.
For more than six years, Jestin was a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York. While there, she prosecuted members of Mafia families, including Peter Gotti and 16 co-defendants. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act case, she says, was a big victory that sought to root out the corruption on the waterfront and in the waterfront unions.
“It was a very traditional case focused on labor racketeering—one of the bread-and-butter aspects of La Cosa Nostra, the traditional American Mafia,” Jestin recalls.
The three-month trial, however, came with some additional complications. She was pregnant with her first child and was feeling sick.
“I was very tired,” Jestin says. “But it was too early to tell anyone. My trial team knew. The defense lawyers made comments that I looked sick, or I looked a little chubby.”
Another Mafia case she worked on involved the Colombo crime family and Billy Cutolo, who disappeared in 1999. Subsequently, his murder was prosecuted by Jestin’s office without his body having been found. There was one holdout on the jury, which resulted in a mistrial. Later, Cutolo’s body was discovered buried on Long Island. The case was successfully retried with the help of a new witness.
Getting people to testify against members of the Mafia can be problematic. If the witness is looking to reduce jail time they might be facing, it can be a powerful incentive to testify.
“In general, I am a big believer in rapport building,” she says. “I love people, and I generally get along with everybody. I think very few people are irredeemable. With witness cooperators, with clients, with anyone, co-counsel, opposing counsel, I just think kindness and humility and really trying to create those connections is an important part of practice. And none of that is incompatible with being tough and unrelenting when a case demands it.”
In 2007, Jestin went to work for Jenner & Block in New York City. Shortly after joining, the Center for Constitutional Rights, which does pro bono work with the firm, was looking for a lawyer who had tried cases in Article III courts to represent Majid Khan, who was then a Guantánamo Bay high-value detainee. She agreed.
Khan emigrated from Pakistan to the United States as a teenager and resided in Baltimore. He later became radicalized and was ultimately detained, tortured by the U.S. government for three years at black sites and then transferred to Guantánamo Bay, where he was detained for over 15 years. In 2012, he pleaded guilty to five war crimes, including murder, attempted murder and spying, pursuant to a cooperation agreement with the government. He was released in 2023—the first and only high-value detainee to leave the Guantánamo Bay detention facility.
“The reason I took that case had a lot to do with my experience with witness cooperators, investigations, working with the FBI and just believing in rapport building and in our rule of law and not engaging in torture; not engaging in abusive behavior,” Jestin says. “It’s not a way to get information that is reliable. And it’s just wrong.”
She says Jenner & Block engages in “courageous pro bono work” that allowed her to work steadily on Khan’s case. “At the time—now it doesn’t seem like a big deal to represent someone who was in Guantánamo—it was really controversial,” she says.
Initially, she thought Khan and other detainees would be brought into the United States while she worked on the case. But that didn’t happen, and she had to travel to Guantánamo. She describes the detention center as a “Kafkaesque situation.” Rules changed frequently, and while some people in the detention camp treated her well, others treated lawyers like criminals.
“I’m glad I had the experience,” she says. “It’s a ridiculous mess: a self-inflicted error for the United States.”
Still, the hard work of Jestin and her team paid off. Khan is currently living in Belize with his wife and two children.
Jestin, who made partner at 37, says she has benefited from having mentors over the years. She now sits in a space where she can mentor others.
“There are a number of women with whom I work now,” she says. “And they started as baby associates. And I was their mentor. They are amazing. They are total rock stars. To watch them grow in their careers and build a thriving practice, it’s been gratifying.”
Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.
