Prior to joining USC Gould, Jef Pearlman spent four years as the clinical supervising attorney and lecturer in law in the Juelsgaard Intellectual Property and Innovation Clinic at Stanford University. In the clinic, he helped supervise and train second- and third-year law students to represent non-profits and innovators at the cutting edge of intellectual property and innovation policy in courts, administrative agencies and the public sphere.

Prior to his work at Stanford, Pearlman received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from MIT and his JD from Stanford Law School, where he represented clients as a student in the Cyberlaw Clinic. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable William W. Schwarzer in the Northern District of California and, sitting by designation, on the 1st, 6th and 9th circuits. Pearlman was awarded the Bruce J. Ennis Fellowship for First Amendment Law, which enabled him to advocate for sound intellectual property, technology and innovation policy as a fellow and staff attorney at the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, Public Knowledge. He returned to the Bay Area, where he litigated patent disputes in federal court and at the International Trade Commission and advised clients on a variety of corporate, transactional and litigation issues relating to open-source software at Covington & Burling LLP.