Paul Brest is Professor Emeritus (active), at Stanford Law School, a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a faculty co-director of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and co-director of the Stanford Law and Policy Lab. He was president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation from 2000-2012.

He is co-author of Money Well Spent: A Strategic Guide to Smart Philanthropy (2^nd ed 2018), Problem Solving, Decision Making, and Professional Judgment (2010), and articles on constitutional law, philanthropy, and impact investing. His current courses include Problem Solving for Public Policy and Social Change, Measuring and Improving Social Impact, and Advanced Topics in Philanthropy and Impact Investing. He also is the instructor in an online course, Essentials of Nonprofit Strategy, offered by Philanthropy University.

Professor Brest is a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and holds honorary degrees from Northwestern University School of Law and Swarthmore College. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1969, he clerked for Judge Bailey Aldrich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Justice John M. Harlan of the U.S. Supreme Court, and did civil rights litigation with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in Mississippi.