Laurel Simmons
Clinical Assistant Professor
Academic Initiatives / Bar Prep
J.D., Stanford Law School
B.A., Wake Forest University
Laurel Simmons is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Houston Law Center. She teaches JDs and foreign-trained LL.M. students in a variety of courses and workshops in UHLC’s Academic Initiatives and Bar Preparation programs. Professor Simmons previously taught at both University of California, Berkeley School of Law and University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.
Professor Simmons has wide-ranging practice experience spanning service in the United States’ executive and judicial branches of government as well as private sector trial and appellate work in an elite law firm and as a solo practitioner. Professor Simmons served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Texas in both the criminal and civil divisions at both the trial and appellate level and as a law clerk for the Honorable Julie E. Carnes, then the Chief Judge of the Northern District of Georgia. While practicing law in Washington, DC and Silicon Valley for international law firm WilmerHale, Professor Simmons represented clients in matters before the federal courts, Department of Justice, United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and multiple state attorneys general. Later, she also was principal of her own firm in the Bay Area, with a state and federal practice of both trial and appellate work, with significant experience representing individuals in high-stakes criminal defense matters.
While in law school, Professor Simmons participated in Stanford’s Capital Defense Clinic on San Quentin’s Death Row and the East Palo Alto Community Law Clinic, and she helped design and found Stanford’s Three Strikes Project. Prior to law school, Professor Simmons taught high school English in Bethesda, Maryland.
Professor Simmons is a graduate of Stanford Law School (with pro bono honors) and Wake Forest University (summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa).
