Laura Coffin

Deputy Public Defender, she/her

Laura Coffin began her legal career at PDMC in 2007 and returned to the office in 2025, bringing nearly two decades of experience in state and federal courts, at both the trial and appellate levels.

Laura spent seven years with Oregon’s public defense appellate division, where she regularly briefed and argued cases before the Oregon Court of Appeals and Oregon Supreme Court. She later served as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in Eugene, representing clients in complex federal criminal cases.

In private practice, Laura was a shareholder at the law firm of Luvaas Cobb and later established her own firm, Coffin Law LLC. Her practice included complex federal criminal defense as a member of the Criminal Justice Act (CJA) panel, major felony cases in state court, complex civil litigation in state and federal courts, and civil and criminal appellate work, including cases before the Oregon Supreme Court. She has also contributed to legal publications and presented continuing legal education programs for other attorneys.

Laura earned her J.D. from the University of Oregon School of Law and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Oregon with a B.A. in English Literature.

After building a successful private practice, Laura chose to return to public defense because she believes that the quality of a person’s legal representation should never depend on their ability to pay. She enjoys providing careful, thorough, and committed representation to people accused of crimes, and believes that every client deserves to be heard, treated with dignity, and taken seriously.  

Laura believes that no criminal case is insignificant to the person whose freedom, family, and future are at stake. She believes that every person, regardless of the accusation or their history, deserves a careful and rigorous defense, and that insisting on those protections for every individual is essential to preserving the freedom of us all. She also believes that a just society must do more than condemn—that it must recognize the humanity of every person and always leave room for people to find their way forward.