Brence Pernell, Esq.
Columbia Law School https://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/brence-pernell
About The Lecturer
A former public high school teacher, Brence advises nonprofit and private companies that help make public education better and more equitable. He specifically provides in-house legal counsel to senior leaders on operational and business matters, including those related to education policy, compliance and risk management, privacy, technology, intellectual property, and other legal issues.
Separately, Brence teaches legal writing and legal methods to law students as an Adjunct Law Professor, including most recently at Columbia Law School. He additionally consults with various legal organizations for independent legal writing training. Brence's own writing on education, race, and the law has been published in the NYU Law Review, Villanova Law Review, the Yale Law & Policy Review, and the Howard Human & Civil Rights Law Review. His writing has also been featured in The Washington Post.
After obtaining his undergraduate degree in History from Duke University, Brence studied at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, earning his M.Ed. He taught high school for several years thereafter and went on to graduate from the NYU School of Law as both a Root-Tilden Kern Scholar and an AnBryce Scholar, and was a Ford Foundation Public Interest Fellow at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. An NYU Law Review editor, he won the writing prize for most outstanding Note for the Law Review in international, commercial, or public law.
Brence clerked for two years after law school—at the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina (then Judge J. Michelle Childs, 2022 SCOTUS shortlist) and with the then Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (Judge Theodore McKee)—before litigating at a large corporate law firm.
He is based in New York City.
Practice Area(s)
Legal Research & Writing
Non-Profit
Education Law
Business and Corporation
Privacy & Cybersecurity
Science & Technology
Intellectual Property
Education
J.D., NYU School of Law
M.Ed., Harvard University Graduate School of Education
B.A., History, Duke University
