Brenda S. Diana's documented professional life is rooted in Boston, Massachusetts, where she has practiced for most of her career. The city has a long legal tradition, and Ropes & Gray, the firm where she later spent decades, was founded there in 1865 by two Harvard Law graduates, John Codman Ropes and John Chipman Gray.
Diana received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University in 1984. Cornell was founded in 1865 in Ithaca, New York, through the efforts of Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, and it combines the character of a private research university with a land-grant mission.
She then studied at New York University School of Law, where she received a Juris Doctor degree in 1987. The law school traces its origins to 1835 and is among the oldest law schools in the United States. Her law degree preceded her admission to the Massachusetts bar in 1988.
Diana was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1988. She built the core of her career at Ropes & Gray, a Boston firm founded in 1865 that developed a private client practice serving individuals and families with estate, trust, and tax matters. Within the firm's Private Client Group, she advanced to partner.
At Ropes & Gray her practice involved the administration of clients' estates and trusts, including post-mortem tax planning and advice on fiduciary responsibilities. She also served as executor for estates of varying size and complexity. Her clients included high net worth individuals, multiple generations of wealthy families, entrepreneurs, and corporate executives.
Diana later co-founded Hall & Diana LLC in Boston in 2023 with Martin Hall, who had also spent more than thirty-five years in the Private Client Group at Ropes & Gray. The Boston firm concentrates on estate planning, trusts, and wills, and offers fiduciary services and advice on the settlement of estates.
Diana is a current member of the Advisors and Ambassadors Board of Project Citizenship and is a former chair of its board of directors. Project Citizenship is a Boston-based nonprofit that provides free legal services to lawful permanent residents seeking U.S. citizenship. It began as the Greater Boston Citizenship Initiative, a collaboration of community partners, and has described itself as the only organization in Massachusetts solely dedicated to free naturalization legal services.
She was formerly a member of the advisory board of directors of My Life My Choice, a Boston-based survivor-led nonprofit founded in 2002. The organization works to end the commercial sexual exploitation of children through mentoring, prevention education, professional training, and advocacy, and it is part of the Justice Resource Institute.
