BRENDA C. LISS, ESQ. is General Counsel to the Newark Board of Education, having been appointed to that position by the Board in its transition from state operation to local control, effective July 1, 2018. Prior to her appointment (and for some time concurrently with her service as General Counsel), Ms. Liss was a partner and head of the School Law Group at Riker Danzig Scherer Hyland & Perretti LLP in Morristown, New Jersey.
Ms. Liss was admitted to the Bar of the State of New Jersey and the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey in 1984 and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in 1986. After serving as law clerk to Hon. Stephen Skillman, J.S.C. in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Chancery Division (special Mount Laurel assignment), she joined McCarter & English, LLP in Newark and practiced law with that firm for 16 years. She then had a five-year foray into higher education as Executive Director of the Institute on Education Law and Policy at Rutgers-Newark before joining Riker Danzig in 2008.
Ms. Liss is a graduate of Colgate University and Rutgers School of Law-Newark. She has taught education law at the Rutgers-Newark School of Public Affairs and Administration and Rutgers School of Law-Newark. She has been recognized by SuperLawyers magazine and has received the “AV Preeminent” designation from the Martindale–Hubbell Legal Directory, the highest rating for competence and character based on confidential peer reviews, for more than 20 years. In 2018 she was named one of ten “Top Women in the Law” by the New Jersey Law Journal, and in 2019 she was named one of New Jersey’s “Power 50 Education – Shaping the State’s Learning Landscape” by NJBiz.