Melissa joined the firm in 2024. Her practice focuses on safeguarding civil rights and liberties against emerging technologies and advocating for the responsible use of technology. She currently represents authors and artists enforcing their rights against generative artificial intelligence companies.
Melissa arrived from a law clerk position for the Honorable Daniel J. Calabretta in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California. As an inaugural clerk, she was integral in setting up the Court’s chambers, working through a significant backlog of reassigned cases, and ensuring the Court timely and efficiently addressed new matters.
Prior to her clerkship, Melissa was a litigation fellow at the San Francisco office of a national civil rights litigation firm, where she focused on labor and employment matters. Although her title was litigation fellow, she performed as an associate, often working with only one partner. She engaged in pre-suit settlement negotiations and mediations, and represented clients in litigation. She drafted motions, demand letters, and mediation briefs and declarations; led discovery efforts; and conducted client and witness interviews.
Melissa has been a legal intern for the ACLU Privacy & Technology project. She aided in drafting a Supreme Court amicus brief and wrote memorandums on the constitutionality of state curfew orders and the right to travel/right of movement in support of Black Lives Matter protests, commercial speech in the context of consumer data privacy, and other topics. She has also been a legal intern for the Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, where her work and research covered abortion rights and state policy.
Melissa has written for Law360 as an author (“Weighing Workplace Surveillance for Remote Works” (2022)) and as a co-author (“How Companies. Can Support Fathers Taking Full Parental Leave” (2022)). In 2023, she conducted an Employment Law and Workplace Privacy myLawCLE presentation, “How Workplace Surveillance Can Violate Employment Laws.” And she has authored Free Speech Off My Body: Protecting Abortion Patients and Medical Privacy in Light of the First Amendment, 54 UC Davis L. Rev 1687, 1687 (2021).
While in law school, Melissa was a Senior Articles Editor and a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion committee member on the UC Davis Law Review; VP of External Affairs and 3L Representative for the Law Students Association; Co-Chair of If/When/How: Law Students for Reproductive Justice; and a First Generation Advocates member. She received Witkin Awards for top grades in three courses: Federal Courts for Civil Rights Litigators; Reproductive Rights Law and Policy; and Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and the Law.
Melissa is a member of the Bar Association of San Francisco.