Donna M. Melby

Melby is a business trial lawyer whose innovative and unrelenting focus has resulted in a pattern of dispositive victories for her clients in district courts across the United States.

Although she can’t comment on the specifics of many of her cases, Melby has spent roughly six years waging a nationwide battle in five different districts in 23 cases involving Title VII 42 U.S. Code 1981 equal rights, breach of contract, conspiracy and hostile work environment claims, originally misjoined as one case in the Northern District of California.

Melby said she favors trade secret cases, discrimination and retaliation cases, class actions and complex commercial litigation cases.

“Those are the kinds of things that I’ve been focused on in my career ... and those are the things that I’ve spent my time with,” said Melby, who has had her sights set on being a trial lawyer since she was a child.

“My father was a jury trial lawyer and I lost him when I was 19-years-old. He was always an inspiration to me,” Melby said. “When I was about 10-years-old, he took me to see a jury trial. After that day, I stuck with my dream to be a jury trial lawyer.”

After losing her father, Melby left college and nearly gave up on her dream.

“But my mother, who was 10 years his junior with five children and only 38-years-old at the time and had no opportunity for an education of her own, said to me, ‘That’s not what your father would have wanted’,” Melby said. Her mother’s words “really hit home” and inspired her to go back to school.

“I remembered my dream and I remembered that it would have been something that he’d be happy about. So I went back to college and I went on to law school,” Melby said. “I never looked back and it has been the most rewarding career that I ever could have imagined.”

— Skylar Dubelko