Rosemary Nelson was threatened many times by loyalist paramilitaries. She also alleged that RUC officers had assaulted, verbally abused and threatened her.
Her colleague, Pat Finucane, another high-profile lawyer who suffered intimidation, was murdered 10 years ago, and Ms Nelson knew the dangers.
A senior officer from the London Metropolitan Police recently completed an investigation into her allegations that police had threatened her while they were interviewing her clients in Gough and Castlereagh RUC stations.
His confidential report is with the Independent Commission for Police Complaints. Ironically, the commission was to meet Ms Nelson at the end of this month to discuss the London officer's report. Ultimately it will be for the North's DPP to decide what action, if any, is to be taken.
Mr Patrick Vernon, a solicitor and friend, worked with Ms Nelson in her successful Lurgan practice in Co Armagh. "Rosemary represented people from both sides of the community. She loved the law and she genuinely wanted to use it to help people, especially those others wouldn't be interested in helping," he said yesterday.
Her practice was large and broad, but it was probably because of three nationalist cases that she lost her life. She acted for a Lurgan republican, Mr Colin Duffy, the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition and the Hamill family from Portadown.
Such work was probably enough to damn her in the eyes of her murderers.
Just as Pat Finucane was viewed as being too sympathetic to republicanism because he represented many republicans in well-publicised cases, so it seems was Ms Nelson similarly labelled.
Certain loose talk would also have bolstered the view among loyalist elements that there was more to some lawyers than doing a job to the best of their ability.
For instance, the comment 10 years ago by the then junior Tory minister, Mr Douglas Hogg, that there were "a number of solicitors who are unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA" is an opinion still held in some quarters. Coincidentally, Ms Nelson recently joined lawyers expressing concern about alleged British army and RUC collusion in the murder of Mr Finucane.
Mr Vernon decried the notion of Ms Nelson working to a particular agenda. "Rosemary was all for people's rights."
A Lurgan friend of Ms Nelson endorsed this. "I knew loyalists who were anxious that she take their cases, because they knew if she felt an injustice had been done she would pursue that case 110 per cent. With Rosemary it wasn't about republicanism or loyalism, it was about human rights."
Her friends and acquaintances described her as a "dynamic" solicitor. "If she felt there was an injustice or a wrong she pursued that case like a Rottweiler until justice was done," said Mr Vernon.
She was married to Paul Nelson, and had three school-going children, Gavin, Christopher and Sarah. A law graduate of Queen's University Belfast, she developed a thriving legal practice in her home town of Lurgan.
Ms Nelson came to prominence in recent years, firstly in successfully representing Mr Duffy in his appeal against a conviction for the 1993 murder of a UDR soldier, John Lyness. Mr Duffy was also her client when he was accused of the murders of two policemen, John Graham and David Johnson, in Lurgan in June 1997. These charges were later dropped.
She acted for the family of Robert Hamill, a Catholic beaten to death by loyalists in Portadown town centre in 1997, and was advising them on whether to take a private case against the RUC for failing to come to his assistance when he was attacked.
She was representing 200 nationalists claiming compensation against the RUC over Drumcree, and last month she accompanied a Garvaghy Road residents' delegation that met the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, to discuss the continuing marching dispute.
Ms Nelson claimed that while representing Garvaghy residents in 1997 she was physically and verbally abused by police officers. She said RUC officers, who were not wearing discernible identification, drew her into a circle of police and called her "a Fenian f....r".
She said she drew similar foul language when she asked a policeman for his number. "I can't recall ever being so frightened in my entire life," she said of the alleged experience.
In November last year Ms Nelson said she was harassed by RUC officers because of the cases she took up. Of some of the police officers who dealt with her she said: "They say I'm a terrorist . . . and that makes them a terrorist, too. Sometimes they say I'm a tout. They also ask if I'm a `good ride' and say it's well known that my clients are sleeping with me."
Working on such high-profile cases in the cauldron of mid-Ulster made her vulnerable to such intimidation, both from loyalists and allegedly from police elements.