Brennan's education moved from Oxford, Ohio, to Washington, D.C., before her legal career developed in Chicago. Undergraduate study at Miami University preceded her legal training at Georgetown University Law Center, a path that connected a public university in the Midwest with a Jesuit law school in the nation's capital.
Brennan's higher education began at Miami University, where she studied from 1982 to 1986 and received a bachelor's degree. Founded in 1809, Miami is one of the oldest public universities in Ohio.
She then attended Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., from 1987 to 1990 and earned a Juris Doctor. Founded in 1870, Georgetown Law was the first law school established in the United States by a Jesuit institution. By the late 1980s the school had awarded the J.D. degree for decades, having moved from earlier evening programs during the 1960s.
Brennan's legal career began in Chicago in 1990, the year she was admitted to the Illinois bar. Her first position was as an attorney at Brinks Gilson & Lione from 1990 to 1995. Founded in Chicago in 1917, the intellectual property firm began as a small practice in the First National Bank Building and had more than 140 attorneys by 2017. At Brinks she handled trademark and trade dress litigation before federal courts and the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, and she worked on trademark and copyright prosecution, clearance, and opinion work.
She then joined Ameritech Corporation, one of the regional telephone companies formed from the breakup of the Bell System in the 1980s, where she served as chief intellectual property counsel. Ameritech merged into SBC Communications in 1999, and Brennan left the company after that merger. She next founded an international vacation experience company in Lucca, Italy, which she managed for about ten years, before resuming legal work in Chicago with a boutique intellectual property firm.
In 2017 she founded The Brennan Law Group, LLC, a Chicago practice focused on trademark protection, registration, licensing, and portfolio management. A trademark protects names, words, and symbols that identify the source of goods or services, and the firm's work covers their clearance, registration, and enforcement. Brennan is admitted to practice in Illinois and before the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
Brennan's documented political role is local. She serves as an elected trustee of the Village of River Forest, Illinois, a suburb west of Chicago, and has been on the village board since April 2019.
A village board governs a municipality by adopting ordinances, approving budgets, and overseeing local services. The office therefore concerns municipal governance in Illinois rather than national party politics.
Quotes from others about the person
A client testimonial on the website of The Brennan Law Group describes Brennan as having made complex trademark matters understandable and having led the client through the process successfully.
