Tara Cooley

Teaching Fellow

Biography

Tara Cooley is the teaching fellow in the Animal Law Clinic, where law students advocate in animal cruelty cases under Desmond’s Law—the nation’s first courtroom animal advocate program law.

She earned her JD from Golden Gate University and her LLM in Animal Law at Lewis & Clark Law School. where she served as an associate editor of the Animal Law Review.

Cooley served as a legal extern at East Bay Community Law Center, a law clinic of the University of California, Berkley, in the Health and Welfare Practice, where she assisted with community access to public benefits. She also served as a legal intern at the Animal Welfare Institute, where she researched states’ inclusion of pets in protective orders and animal cruelty as an element of human abuse. She serves as a board member on the San Francisco District Attorney’s Victims of Crime Advisory Board.

Cooley received the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s Advancement of Animal Law Scholarship, and a Brooks Institute for Animal Rights Law and Policy Domestic Scholarship.