Melissa Lessell is an AV-rated, equity partner at Deutsch Kerrigan, LLP in New Orleans, Louisiana. She serves as her firm’s General Counsel and is a member of the Firm’s Commercial Litigation and Professional Liability Department. Her practice focuses on the defense of lawyers and other professionals in litigation and disciplinary proceedings.

Ms. Lessell regularly writes and presents on the subjects of ethics, legal malpractice, and professional responsibility. She is regularly recognized in the fields of professional liability and legal malpractice defense by local, regional, and national publications.
Melissa is a very active member of professional groups related to her practice area. Nationally, she serves as a Special Advisor to the ABA National Standing Committee on Lawyers Professional Liability and is on a number of committees for the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility. She is also a member of APRL, the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers, a national organization that focuses on legal ethics, disciplinary issues. professional responsibility law, and the law of lawyering. Locally, Ms. Lessell is a member of the Louisiana State Bar Association’s Rules of Professional Conduct Committee and the Professional Liability Insurance Committee, and was a member of the 2018-2019 Louisiana State Bar Leadership Class.

Melissa also serves as an adjunct professor at her alma mater, Tulane University Law School, where she is the co-director of the Trial Advocacy Program, and teaches the Civil Litigation Intersession Boot Camp.