Perlman's documented formative years center on the 1960s, when he completed his undergraduate studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He then moved on to Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which placed him in the New England academic and legal community that shaped his later career in Boston.
Perlman studied at Brown University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in 1967 magna cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Brown was founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and it was the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. From its early years it admitted students regardless of religious affiliation, and it was renamed in 1804 in honor of its benefactor Nicholas Brown.
Phi Beta Kappa, founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary, is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, recognizing excellence in the liberal arts and sciences.
Perlman continued his legal education at Harvard Law School, where he received a Juris Doctor cum laude in 1970. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United States. Its three-year Juris Doctor program was part of a school whose first endowed professorship was funded by a bequest from the estate of Isaac Royall Jr., a connection the school has examined in recent years.
Perlman was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1970, the year he received his law degree from Harvard Law School. Bar admission authorized him to practice law in Massachusetts.
He is a partner at Ropes & Gray, a Boston law firm founded in 1865 by John Codman Ropes and John Chipman Gray, both Harvard Law graduates. The firm developed a bankruptcy practice during the Great Depression and a labor practice during the New Deal, and it had grown to nearly 75 attorneys by the 1960s.
His listed practice areas are employment law and labor and employment law, and his professional profile identifies him as a Boston attorney.
Perlman was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the honor society that he joined in connection with his Brown University degree. Phi Beta Kappa was founded in 1776 and recognizes outstanding scholarship in the liberal arts and sciences.
