Melanie O.

Melanie O. focuses her practice on appeals and complex commercial litigation.  She has extensive experience in both briefing and arguing appellate matters in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the New York Court of Appeals and all of the lower New York appellate courts, as well as both analyzing and briefing a wide variety of legal issues in litigation matters in federal and state courts throughout the country.  

Melanie graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1991.  She earned her J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1994 and was editor of Harvard Law Review.  After law school, Melanie completed a clerkship with then-Chief Judge Jon O. Newman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. 

After her clerkship, Melanie joined Mayer Brown’s New York Appellate & Supreme Court Practice Group. She then joined Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz where she practiced commercial litigation, and was associated with the boutique Supreme Court litigation practice of Harvard Law Professor and constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe. 

Melanie then spent over six years in the New York State Attorney General’s Office’s Appeals & Opinions Division, where she was awarded a commendation by then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer for winning some of the most challenging cases confronted by that Division. 

Melanie affiliated with Montage Legal Group’s freelance attorney platform in 2018.  She is admitted to practice in New York, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, but has worked on cases in numerous other jurisdictions.  Melanie’s court admissions include: U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.