Professor Melissa Lonegrass is the Harriett S. Daggett-Frances Leggio Landry Professor of Law, Bernard Keith Vetter Professor of Civil Law Studies, and Wedon T. Smith Professor in Civil Law. Professor Lonegrass earned her J.D. from Tulane Law School, where she graduated first in her class. Before joining the LSU Law faculty in 2008, Professor Lonegrass worked as an associate at the New Orleans firm of Irwin Fritchie Urquhart & Moore LLC, specializing in civil defense, with an emphasis on pharmaceutical and medical device defense. Professor Lonegrass has taught numerous civil law courses at the Law Center, including Western Legal Traditions, Obligations, Sales and Real Estate, Security Devices, and Successions, Donations & Trusts. Her scholarship focuses on Louisiana civil law, comparative legal methodology, landlord-tenant law, and contract law. She recently co-authored a textbook on Louisiana’s law of sale and lease, and has published articles in the Tulane Law Review, the Louisiana Law Review, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review, and the Loyola Chicago Law Journal. From 2016-2018, Professor Lonegrass was appointed as a Scholar-in-Residence of the Louisiana Bar Foundation, and in 2019, she was elected as an Academic Fellow of the American College of Real Estate Counsel. Professor Lonegrass is active in law reform in Louisiana, serving as a member of the Council of the Louisiana State Law Institute, as the reporter of the Institute’s Landlord-Tenant Committee and the Notaries Committee, and as a member of many other committees, including the Committee on Successions and Donations.