Attorney Brennae Brooks is originally from Memphis, Tennessee, and she is a combat veteran who served in the U.S. Air Force for 8 years, including deployments to Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. She was also stationed in Alaska and Florida. She began taking college courses when she was stationed in Alaska, and she earned her undergraduate degree from Wayland Baptist University in 2009. Shortly thereafter, while stationed in Florida, Attorney Brooks (then Staff Sergeant Brooks) volunteered to replace a fellow Sergeant who did not want to deploy to a war zone because he had orders to Germany with his family. While on that deployment to Afghanistan, her supervisor, who was back in Florida, sent her a poor performance rating. As fate would have it, she met a military paralegal who helped her fight for a higher performance rating using the appropriate rules and regulations. After that experience, she began to research the requirements for law school and she separated from the U.S. Air Force 4 months after returning from that deployment with her sights set on becoming an attorney.
However, a few weeks after separating from the U.S. Air Force, she went on a civilian deployment to Afghanistan with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. While there, she took the law school admissions examination (LSAT) and she was accepted into one law school, but rejected by many others, to include the law school in her hometown. In 2011, she moved to Houston, Texas to attend The Thurgood Marshall School of Law, Texas Southern University and she graduated in the top 25 percent of her law school class in 2014. Although she was a disabled veteran with a “veterans preference” for jobs, she was rejected by many employers, to include the VA. However, she reapplied, and she was offered a position at the Board of Veterans’ Appeals (Board) in Washington, D.C. about a year later.
Prior to accepting her position with the Board, she had the opportunity to pursue pro bono appellate work through the Veterans Consortium Pro Bono Program and she successfully represented a disabled Veteran before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. After working on that case, Attorney Brooks set her sights on becoming an expert in the area of Veterans benefits.
While working at the Board of Veterans’ Appeals, she spent 5 years conducting extensive research in order to write a high volume of appellate decisions. She consulted on laws and regulations pertaining to Veterans benefits, as set forth in Title 38 of the United States Code and the Code of Federal Regulations; the precedent decisions of the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (CAVC), the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Federal Circuit), and the United States Supreme Court; and the precedent decisions of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) General Counsel.
Her efforts to quickly learn and apply Veterans law earned her an overall exceptional rating for the quality of her decisions during her first two years at the Board. During her second year, she exceeded the quantity standards for fiscal year 2019 and received several Writing Awards for her efforts. She was also recognized as an exceptional quality writer for fiscal year 2021. Throughout her 5 years at the Board, she wrote over 520 decisions with more than 1154 legal issues.
After nearly 20 years of public service, education, and training, Attorney Brooks decided to relocate to her hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, and she set her sights on starting a law firm and representing veterans who were seeking to obtain VA disability benefits. Therefore, she purchased a building in the vicinity of the Orange Mound community, which is the country’s oldest African-American neighborhood. She also spent a lot of time in Orange Mound because she grew up attending the Mt. Bethel Missionary Baptist Church where her father, Pastor NaQuin Brooks, Sr., has been pastoring for over 30 years. Her mission is to not only represent veterans seeking disability compensation from the VA, but she will also train and educate veterans on laws and regulations pertaining to their benefits.