Holley was raised in Los Angeles. Her mother was a legal secretary who earned an M.B.A. through night classes and became the manager of a prestigious law firm. Though Holley spent many hours at her mother's law firm, she was uninterested in the law until she met "a cool lawyer who did work that excited her". She enrolled in law school and one summer took a law-clerk position at the public defenders office which included interviewing people who had been detained.[2][3]
The experience was a revelation. "The holding cell is packed with people," Holley recalls. "Packed! Everybody is black or brown. I was like, 'I don’t understand—how is it that only black or brown men have committed crimes?'[3]
Holley is a partner at the firm Kinsella Weitzman Iser Kump Holley LLP, practicing in various areas of litigation.[6] Having joined the firm in 2006, it was renamed to include her name in 2021.[7]
Holley was chief legal correspondent for the E! Network, as well as an on-air legal analyst for KABC Eyewitness News in Los Angeles. She has appeared on the Today Show, Good Morning America, PrimeTime Live, Court TV, Fox News and CNN.[1] Additionally Holley is a visiting faculty lecturer at Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University in New York City.[1]
In 2018, Holley was added to the Board of Trustees of Southwestern Law School.[12]
The character "Jax" in the 2022 TV series Reasonable Doubt is loosely based on the experiences of Shawn Holley, who is also a producer for the show.[13]
