Melissa Gold

Melissa Gold is a litigation attorney in Holland & Knight's Chicago office, where she assists a diverse range of clients in all aspects of state and federal litigation.

In addition to being an experienced trial lawyer, Ms. Gold leverages her knowledge of electronic discovery (eDiscovery) to provide strategic and cost-effective advice to clients relating to information governance, data preservation, internal investigations, forensic collections, governmental requests, third party subpoenas, pending or threatened litigation, active litigation, negotiation of ESI protocols and managed document review.

As a former in-house litigator, Ms. Gold understands that litigation risk management is one of many competing business considerations when advising clients on legal matters. Ms. Gold provides comprehensive advice across cross-functional client departments while taking into account the priorities unique to each client. Within the firm, Ms. Gold serves as a co-coordinator of the Women's Initiative for the Chicago office.

Prior to joining Holland & Knight, Ms. Gold was an associate at a national law firm in its Chicago office, where she handled a variety of matters involving e-discovery, information governance, internal investigations, regulatory compliance, contract disputes, shareholder disputes, consumer class actions, constitutional litigation and complex commercial litigation.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Gold was assistant corporation counsel for the city of Chicago. In this role, she defended against federal civil rights and state law lawsuits where she tried several jury trials and served as lead counsel in more than 100 depositions. As a prosecutor, Ms. Gold tried more than 180 cases on behalf of the city of Chicago. In addition, Ms. Gold served as in-house counsel for a multinational fast-food corporation, where she consulted on domestic commercial litigation and served on e-discovery teams to support internal investigations.

During law school, Ms. Gold was an editor of the Frederick Green Moot Court Illinois Team, and managed litigation matters as a 711 licensed law student in the Civil Litigation Clinic. Ms. Gold also served as a legal extern for the State Attorney's Office in Cook County, Illinois, and as a judicial extern for the Honorable Robert E. Gordon of Illinois' First District Appellate Court, and for the Honorable Alfred L. Levinson of the Circuit Court of Cook County.

Before law school, Ms. Gold worked as a congressional intern for then-Sen. Barack Obama.