Mel Tapia Cortez is an associate in the Litigation Department of Morrison Foerster’s San Francisco office.

Mel Tapia Cortez focuses her practice on litigation and investigations, with experience spanning complex civil litigation, arbitration, and international human rights matters.

Mel served as a summer associate in Morrison Foerster’s San Francisco office, where she researched and drafted portions of court-filed briefs, analyzed recent Ninth Circuit decisions for memoranda on developments in arbitration law, and supported litigation teams on active matters.

While in law school, Mel was a student member of Berkeley Law’s International Human Rights Law Clinic, where she analyzed large volumes of public-source material to build evidentiary databases for international criminal investigations, drafted affidavits for submission to the International Criminal Court, and prepared detailed background memoranda in advance of witness interviews.

Mel obtained her J.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where she was a Berkeley Law Opportunity Scholar and actively involved in international human rights and affinity organizations. She earned dual B.A. degrees in gender studies and history from the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating with highest honors, and completed her undergraduate education at Santa Monica Community College.