Donna Palermino

Biography

Donna received her B.A. cum laude in Economics from Harvard University, and her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she served as a Note and Comment Editor on the Law Review. She has been admitted to the Massachusetts Bar, and the bars of the U.S. District Court of the District of Massachusetts, the First Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court. Following law school, she clerked for the Honorable Charles P. Sifton in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She worked for many years as a civil litigator at Brown, Rudnick, Freed & Gesmer and the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, where she served as an Assistant Attorney General in the Government Bureau, and the Consumer Protection and Antitrust Divisions. Her experience in civil litigation included a wide variety of state and federal constitutional issues, administrative law, and business, consumer protection and antitrust cases. In 1995, the National Association of Attorneys General honored her with appointment as a United States Supreme Court Fellow.

Since 2000, Donna has been teaching law at both the J.D. and LLM levels. Her courses have included Consumer Protection and Business Law, Civil Liberties, and Minority Politics at Suffolk Law School and Suffolk University, and Legal Writing and Analysis, Antitrust Law, and Intensive Introduction to American Law and Legal Institutions at Northeastern Law School. In 2004, Donna began to teach American law and lawyering skills as part of an intensive Legal English for Practitioners program for international lawyers, judges and law students at BU’s Center for English Language and Orientation Program (CELOP). She also teaches the intensive summer pre-LLM class for international students. She has worked in the two-year LLM program since 2015, teaching a variety of courses such as Academic Skills for US Law Studies, Persuasive Legal Advocacy, Introduction to U.S. Legal Culture, and Topics in American Law. She also teaches in the one-year LLM program for international students, including Civil Trial Advocacy, Introduction to the Uniform Commercial Code, and Contracts for International LLMs.