When Luis Anthony Rivera went to prison 30 years ago, he was 29 years old, sentenced to life without parole plus 140 years for conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

But in September, Rivera was released—and not because he had been wrongly convicted or was granted clemency­. Working pro bono, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan’s Sam Sheldon and Starnes Davis Florie’s Richard Davis won his freedom based on a novel application of a 2014 decision by a U.S. district court judge in New York—what they dubbed “the Holloway doctrine.”