Pat Finucane

After graduating, Finucane apprenticed at the law firm of Oliver Kelly. In 1979, he formed Madden & Finucane Solicitors, with Peter Madden, which is still led by Madden, and continues to act for those it considers to have been victims of mistreatment by the state, or their survivors. In 1981, Finucane represented IRA prison leader Bobby Sands and Irish National Liberation Army hunger strikers who later died during the 1981 Irish hunger strike. He also represented Brian Gillen and three men shot dead by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in a shoot-to-kill incident in 1982. In 1986, he represented Brenda Downes, the widow of John Downes, a civilian killed by a plastic bullet during an anti-internment rally in Belfast. In 1988, he represented Pat McGeown, who was charged in connection with the Corporals killings.

Patrick Finucane was born on 21 March 1949 into a prominent republican family on Falls Road, Belfast. He was the eldest child of eight, with six brothers—John, Liam, Gerard, Seamus, Martin and Dermot—and a sister, Rosaleen. In August 1969, at the start of the Troubles, his family was forced out of their home between Shankill Road and Falls Road, Belfast. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 1973. One of his brothers, John who was a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) member, was killed in a car crash on Falls Road in 1972. Another brother, Dermot, successfully contested attempts of extradition to Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland for his alleged part in the killing of a prison officer; he was one of 38 IRA prisoners who participated in the Maze Prison escape in 1983. A third brother, Seamus, was the fiancé of Mairead Farrell, one of the participants killed in Operation Flavius by the Special Air Service (SAS) in Gibraltar in March 1988. Seamus was the leader of an IRA unit in west Belfast before his arrest in 1976 with Bobby Sands and seven other IRA men, during an attempt to destroy Balmoral's furniture store in south Belfast. He was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment.

In 1970, Finucane married Geraldine, whom he met at Trinity College. She is the daughter of middle-class Protestants; together they had three children. His son John is a Sinn Féin politician who was elected as Lord Mayor of Belfast in May 2019 and was elected MP for Belfast North in December 2019. Finucane was also a footballer and played as a striker in the Irish League for Crusaders and Lisburn Distillery.

The Pat Finucane Centre named in his honour, is a human rights advocacy and lobbying entity in Northern Ireland. In February 2014, a mural honoring Finucane was completed in west Belfast. A portrait of Finucane was painted by Robert Ballagh; it was displayed in Washington, D.C. and New York in 2011.