When Hunton & Williams took on an independent Fort Lauderdale journalist as a client, the firm didn’t expect to wind up at the center of an effort to declassify U.S. government documents about 9/11.

Dan Christensen first approached Tom Julin of Hunton & Williams’ Miami office in 2009 for help forming a nonprofit news organization, the Florida Bulldog, after he was laid off from the Miami Herald.