Melissa Macchia

Melissa is Co-Chair of Taft's Employment & Labor Relations Group. She focuses her practice on the prevention and defense of litigation and day-to-day consultation for companies and other organizations on employment matters, including discrimination, retaliation and harassment, hiring, discipline, termination, reductions in force, employee compensation, restrictive covenant agreements, and medical leave and accommodations. She also negotiates employment-based contracts and issues in connection with mergers and acquisitions and other strategic transactions and provides internal training programs for human resource, supervisory, and non-supervisory employees on an array of employment-related topics. Her specialties include: managing all stages of the litigation process, including large scale electronic discovery; advising on employment-related agreements and restrictive covenants, as well as employment-related provisions in definitive agreements for strategic transactions; drafting and review of employee handbooks; consultation on reductions in force, wage and hour matters, medical leave issues, and best practices for hiring and terminating employees; and creating and implementing training programs for clients and their employees. She also has unique experience in representing universities in employment matters and student affairs and in conducting internal investigations for schools and athletic departments.