New York Assistant District Attorney Kirsten McDuffie is the best of the best. With the law on her side, she keeps people out of prison and gains an ally in the attorney and vigilante Matt Murdock, AKA Daredevil.
Lay Down the Law
While she works as the city’s Assistant DA, Kirsten sometimes lends a hand over at Nelson and Murdock. Convinced that the attorney-at-law Matt Murdock is Daredevil, Kirsten is persistent in her belief, calling Matt Daredevil to his face and incessantly bugging Matt’s law partner, Foggy Nelson, about it. Foggy patently denies her allegations and suggests that she go on a date with Matt to find out that he couldn’t possibly be the vigilante.
Little is known about her family life but when her mother is on her deathbed, Kirsten isn’t there for her and instead ends up drunk in a bar. She is not close with her father, Wendell, nor the woman he married after her mother’s death.
Law and Order
Kirsten is a capable lawyer, intelligent and resourceful. She can even handle herself in a bind when physically threatened.
Lawbreakers
If Kirsten has any enemies, they exist only in the courtroom in the form of the opposition. She works for the district attorney for a time, but he ends up being a pig, so she leaves his employ to strike out on her own.
Colleagues in the Courtroom
Kirsten shares an on-and-off again romance with Matt and she’s there for him when the world finds out he and Daredevil are one in the same person. Though, when the Purple Children wipe the world and Kirsten’s memories of Matt’s alter ego, Matt ends their relationship.
Kirsten is also friends with Matt’s law partner Foggy Nelson, who respects her as a lawyer and calls her the best. She helps out on their firm’s cases on occasion.
A Lawyer’s Law Book
Kirsten worked with Daredevil and the Legion of Monsters to oppose the racist Sons of the Serpent’s corruption of New York City’s justice system via the Darkhold. In retribution, the Serpents used knowledge of Murdock’s secret identity to blackmail him into representing them; Murdock revealed he was Daredevil under oath, eradicating the Serpent’s leverage. Disbarred in New York for vigilantism, Murdock and McDuffie relocated to San Francisco and opened their own practice, so Murdock could resume practicing law. Meanwhile, Foggy was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma. Matt and Hank Pym faked Foggy’s death so he could privately battle his disease in San Francisco.
When Zebediah Killgrave, AKA the Purple Man, put the entire world under his mind-control using a machine called the Psycho-Prism, he used Daredevil to do his bidding. Killgrave’s offspring, the Purple Children, realized that Daredevil had saved them several times from their abusive father and decided to use their own powers of mind control to help him. With the machine, they amplified their powers and wiped everyone’s knowledge that Daredevil and Matt were the same person, Kirsten included. When Daredevil came through Kirsten’s window, she wasn’t afraid but she also didn’t know him the way she had before, since her memories had been altered. He got a little too friendly, stroking her face, and she told him to leave. After he left, she waited by her phone for her boyfriend Matt to come home. When he arrived, he broke up with her. Little did she know that he omitted the fact that he was Daredevil to protect her. While she shed tears, she told him to not let the door hit him on the way out.
When Daredevil went to trial for the murder of Leo Carraro, Foggy called in a favor to Kirsten to join the legal team and defend him. Despite putting her all into protecting him from the clink, Daredevil accepted the prosecution’s deal, pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter, and went to jail. Once he was locked up, Kirsten paid him a visit and chastised him for choosing to go to prison. Frustrated, she reminded him that it was her job to keep people out of prison and yelled about how the system was just a show.
Still, Kirsten and Foggy worked to free him and eventually won. Upon Daredevil’s release, Kirsten was there with Foggy to greet him. She explained how she got him out of any parole qualifications due to his public-serving activities. Kirsten asked if he was okay and gently touched his face, but he pulled away and said he was fine to her visible disappointment. Instead of riding with his friends back to the city, Daredevil rode with Elektra Natchios.
