Melissa M.

Cresson

Melissa represents local, national, and international energy and industrial clients in high-stakes litigation matters, including mass toxic tort and class action cases, environmental property damage disputes, commercial contractual matters, and regulatory proceedings. Her environmental practice includes matters involving Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act and state superfund issues, Risk Evaluation/Corrective Action Program and Risk-Based Corrective Action cleanups, emergency response issues, water matters, underground injection wells, environmental compliance and audits, and the defense of state and federal enforcement actions.

A significant component of Melissa’s practice involves advising clients on sophisticated eDiscovery issues in both federal and state courts. She has extensive experience developing and implementing defensible discovery strategies for large-scale and complex litigation matters, including preservation, collection, review, analysis, production, and post-production management of substantial volumes of electronically stored information. Melissa regularly advises clients on discovery planning, custodian identification and interviews, forensic collection processes, search term development and negotiation, technology-assisted review protocols, predictive coding, continuous active learning, and advanced analytics tools utilized across leading eDiscovery and litigation management platforms. She also counsels clients regarding discovery compliance obligations and “discovery on discovery” issues.

Melissa has been recognized throughout her career for both professional excellence and community leadership. She maintains an active commitment to community service and civic involvement, serving in numerous leadership roles with educational, arts, and legal organizations throughout the Baton Rouge area.