Biography
Abbee Cox is an alumna of Stanford Law School and Columbia University. At Stanford, she participated in the Criminal Defense Clinic, the Three Strikes Project, the Race and Criminal Justice Reading Group, StreetLaw, SPARC, SSDP, and After Innocence, as well as various journals and affinity groups. She also helped plan Shaking the Foundations 2015, so she is extra delighted to be invited to return to Shakings as a panelist.
After law school, Abbee clerked for Judge Pamela Harris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and Judge Jon Tigar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. She then joined the Orleans Public Defenders, where she represented hundreds of clients charged with everything from petty theft to attempted murder, practicing in Municipal Court, Criminal District Court, and Juvenile Court. In the early days of COVID, Abbee was heavily involved in emergency bail efforts that helped reduce the Orleans Parish Prison population to historic lows. She also organized with the NOLA Defenders 4 Equal Justice, who ran a successful Flip the Bench campaign to get former public defenders elected as criminal court judges.
In 2023, Abbee joined Nolan Barton Olmos & Luciano, a criminal defense boutique in downtown Palo Alto. Since 2024, she has been representing three of the Stanford 11 protestors for Palestine, including fellow panelist Amy Zhai. Abbee helped defend their Stanford disciplinary matters before the Office of Community Standards, and she continues to represent them in their ongoing criminal cases in Santa Clara County Superior Court. In her free time, Abbee volunteers with the Bay Area Childcare Collective and makes weird art with her friends.
