Melissa English

As a civil litigator, I thrive in the fog. Can’t see the path to liability from harm to claim, company a to company d, or victim 1 to victim 5,000? Need to identify theories and develop evidence to get past a long line of negative case law? Want to advocate for a novel application or interpretation of a statute or regulation, or find a way around a novel defense? That’s my wheelhouse and the more complex the issue, the better. I am passionate about the hard, nuts and bolts work it takes to win complex litigation. Some of my greatest professional joys have come from analysis of million document data dumps, marrying argument, case law and facts to win the motion no one else has, and defeating scores of motions dumped the day before trial. For me, this deep, Calvinist streak has produced results: nine jury trials to verdict in state and federal courts including two punitive damage awards, hundreds of millions of dollars in claims resolved at mediation or settlement, and multiple federal classes certified with recovery for tens of thousands of victims. I embrace the fact that my career path has been relentlessly non-linear. As a University of Georgia political science graduate student, my three concentrations were voting behavior, political theory and international relations. As a market research analyst and focus group moderator for Fortune 500 consumer packaged goods companies, I analyzed industries as diverse as soft drinks, snacks, and vacuum cleaners, and developed strategies for making blood donation more enjoyable. I have lived in six states and the District of Columbia, have taken and passed three bar exams, and have been licensed in three states. Out of these diverse experiences comes my “spatial specialist” approach to my practice. I specialize in litigation but treasure trekking across the substantive legal map from constitutional claims to financial services fraud, employment to intellectual property litigation, shareholder derivative litigation to antitrust and RICO. When I am not at work, you can find me in the garden, running in Herring Run Park, or with my camera trying to create some art.