Richard Lettieri was born on May 29, 1947, in Chelsea, Massachusetts, to Roy and Genevieve Lettieri. Chelsea is a city on the Mystic River immediately north of Boston, placing his early life within the Greater Boston area where his later education and legal career took place.
After graduating from Chelsea High School, Lettieri attended Villanova University, a Catholic institution in Villanova, Pennsylvania, founded in 1842 by the Augustinian order. He graduated in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts.
He then enrolled at Boston College Law School, part of Boston College, a Jesuit university founded in 1863 by the Society of Jesus. He graduated in 1974 with a Juris Doctor, which prepared him for admission to the bar the following year.
After Villanova, Lettieri taught algebra and geometry at St. Dominic Savio High School in East Boston for two years. The school opened in 1958 as a Roman Catholic high school run by the Salesians, a religious order devoted to the education of young people.
He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1975. His public-sector legal career then followed at the Massachusetts Port Authority, a quasi-state agency created by the Massachusetts legislature in 1956 to control, operate, and manage Logan International Airport, Hanscom Field, and the facilities of the Port of Boston. He spent nine years with the authority and served as its chief legal counsel from 1981 to 1986.
Lettieri then joined Ropes & Gray, a Boston law firm founded in 1865 by John Codman Ropes and John Chipman Gray. The firm had grown to nearly 75 attorneys by the 1960s. He spent about 25 years there, becoming a partner in 1990 and remaining in that role until 2012. His practice focused on corporate law, public development, and airport law, the last connecting naturally with his earlier work for the Massachusetts Port Authority.
His professional history also includes a partnership with an attorney named S. Eggeling. He later retired from Ropes & Gray.
A 2024 obituary described him as an attorney of high integrity with a strong commitment to justice and a concern for poor and underserved people.
