Paige E. Melendez

Ms. Melendez is committed to listening to each client’s story, evaluating it, and proposing and executing practical steps to meet client goals. The cornerstone to a successful attorney-client relationship, in Ms. Melendez’s opinion, is creating clear lines of communication to help build trust between her and her clients. Ms. Melendez has always known she wanted to become a lawyer. At every key juncture in her life, when asked what she wanted to do with her future, she always responded that she wanted to become an attorney. However, as she neared the end of her undergraduate career at Texas A&M University, Ms. Melendez became interested in employment and labor law and began to envision herself not only as an attorney, but as a labor and employment law attorney. The next step to achieve her goal was applying to law school and she attended The University of Texas School of Law. Even though deciding what type of law to practice so early is rare, it is rarer to stick to that choice through law school. Despite the rarity, when Ms. Melendez took her first class on employment discrimination law at Texas Law, she knew that she had made the right choice. She continued to pursue her dream by interning over the summer at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and learning valuable advocacy skills from the attorneys in the litigation unit. Ms. Melendez also spent a semester gaining real-world experience by splitting time between law school classes and a non-profit law firm called the Equal Justice Center that specializes in helping indigent clients with their employment issues. Both her experiences and passion for this area of the law helped prepare Ms. Melendez to practice employment and labor law in her career.