Smookler joined CLIPI following several years of university teaching and working as special assistant to the Court in Crawford v. LAUSD, a significant Los Angeles school desegregation case. Smookler started at CLIPI in 1984 as a law student intern, then, in 1986, became a full-time contract attorney. She worked primarily on the Century Freeway case.
Smookler became Chief Counsel at the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), the metropolitan planning organization for the six counties in the Southern California region. After 14 years at SCAG, she joined Fox and Sohagi (later The Sohagi Law Group), representing public agencies in land use and environmental matters. Her clients included cities, counties, state agencies, special districts, and regional planning agencies. Throughout her career, Smookler mediated large public policy cases and taught public policy and mediation at UCLA, USC, and the Pepperdine Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution.
