Laura Gayle Coates (born July 11, 1979)[1] is an American legal analyst, attorney, and television broadcaster.

[2] Since October 2023, she has also hosted a nightly news discussion TV program on the network, Laura Coates Live.

Coates was born on July 11, 1979, in Hartford, Connecticut,[3] but was raised in Worcester, Massachusetts until the fourth grade, when her family moved to Minnesota.

from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs after completing a 122-page senior thesis titled "The Legacy of Southern Redemption: An Examination of Felon Disenfranchisement Policy" under the supervision of Russ Nieli.

[citation needed] She is not currently a practicing attorney and is on inactive status with the Office of Lawyer Registration at the Minnesota Supreme Court.

In addition to appearances across CNN programs as an analyst, Coates would also be involved with various specials and town hall events broadcast by the network.

[14] On April 19, 2024, she was covering the prosecution of Donald Trump in New York for CNN when she was suddenly interrupted and had to report live on the self-immolation of Maxwell Azzarello.

[16][17] However, both she and CNN faced criticism for initially misreporting an "active shooter" and for the split-second decision to show the graphic footage of the self-immolation live.