Melissa draws on a decade of in-house counsel experience to provide practical advice to clients on labor and employment matters.
Melissa brings her corporate knowledge to every client conversation: her background means that she readily understands the challenges business executives face and how she can best meet their needs.
Melissa divides her practice between labor and employment litigation and preventative counsel. A strong advocate, she frequently represents employers in lawsuits surrounding employment contracts, noncompete agreements, and restrictive covenants, as well as discrimination allegations. Melissa also has experience with labor arbitrations.
However, Melissa’s goal is always to help clients stay in line with the law and avoid potential problems when possible. Working as a team and thought partner with clients, she provides counsel on employee termination, conducting internal investigations, pay equity reviews, the Americans with Disabilities Act and state disability laws, and the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and she guides employers through difficult conversations involving allegations of discrimination and harassment. While she works with clients in a wide variety of industries, she is particularly experienced with the insurance and financial services industry as well as credit unions, having served as in-house counsel for a company providing products and services within those sectors.
Melissa has also built a niche practice surrounding labor and employment concerns in the midst of crisis management. She counsels clients on both the internal communications necessary when sensitive allegations are made, as well as risk mitigation in media relations. She has experience handling highly sensitive matters with significant public relations concerns and is extensively knowledgeable about the labor and employment implications of these situations.
Melissa is passionate about working in a practice area where people are at the very center, and she believes that in the labor and employment field, emotional intelligence is just as important as legal knowledge. Understanding the central and deeply personal role work plays in employees’ lives, Melissa is often able to defuse a situation with a proactive, emotionally intelligent response. She also understands how important labor and employment matters are to companies and how much is resting on her advice and on case outcomes. And, in matters where adversarial measures are needed, Melissa understands clients want options spanning various risk tolerances and recommendations combined with strong representation.
Earlier in her career, Melissa served in the in-house legal office of a mutual insurance and financial services company where her responsibilities included a variety of labor and employment legal matters. She personally drafted and negotiated employment, restrictive covenant, and separation agreements; oversaw internal investigations regarding harassment allegations and other sensitive matters; advised company leadership on employment-related crisis management; designed lawful recruiting and retention policies aimed at increasing diversity; oversaw employment litigation and litigation strategy; managed EEOC and state and local agency charge actions; and addressed routine workplace legal questions.