Lara Hoffman is a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School as well as a Staff Attorney for the Three Strikes Project. She has focused her career on indigent criminal defense and social justice. Lara has spent many years as an attorney with the Federal Public Defender’s Office in the Central District of California, where she has represented individuals accused of federal crimes, including fraud, narcotics trafficking, firearms possession and trafficking, bank robbery, illegal reentry, and tax offenses. Lara has also represented clients convicted of serious state crimes in their post-conviction habeas appeals. She is currently engaged in multiple innocence investigations for clients who were erroneously convicted of murder and attempted murder in California courts.

Lara obtained her law degree from UCLA Law School’s Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, where she graduated Order of the Coif. She served as Executive Director of El Centro Legal (UCLA’s volunteer legal aid clinics), Editor in Chief of the Women’s Law Journal, and Symposium Editor of the UCLA Law Review. She holds dual Masters degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in Political Science and Public Administration, and earned her BA in Government from Dartmouth College.

After law school, Lara served as a law clerk for the Honorable Harry Pregerson on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Honorable Christina A. Snyder on the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, and the Honorable William D. Keller on the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.