PERSON: Laura Coates

Anchor

Laura Coates (born 1979/1980) is an American attorney. She has formerly served as a trial attorney for the law firms Faegre & Benson and Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman, and a federal prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Since 2016, she has served as an analyst for CNN, and became the network’s chief legal analyst in 2023.

Coates was born in Hartford, Connecticut but was raised in Worcester, Massachusetts until the 4th grade when her family moved to Minnesota. She is the youngest of three sisters. Her father was a dentist. In 1997, she graduated from the St. Paul Academy and Summit School, a private college preparatory independent day school in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In 2001, she graduated with a B.A. from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs after completing a 122-page senior thesis, titled “The Legacy of Southern Redemption: An Examination of Felon Disenfranchisement Policy,” under the supervision of Russ Nieli. In 2005, she received her J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School.

>> Wikipedia