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Melissa Lou has always been pragmatic. That pragmatism initially led her to pursue a finance degree at Arizona State University, given her love of mathematics. “Majoring in finance seemed like it would be more useful on the job market,” says Lou, now the senior director, assistant general counsel, and head of investigations at DaVita Kidney Care.
Business school, however, never felt quite right. She decided to audit a law school course on the philosophy of criminal law. The course piqued her intellectual curiosity, and on her father’s advice, she applied to Yale Law.
“I had this propensity to underestimate myself, and I never dreamed that I would get accepted to Yale,” Lou says. But she did get in. At Yale Law, Lou, who had felt like a face in the crowd at ASU, found her place. The school’s small class sizes and unconventional grading system, which encourages students’ intellectual exploration over competition, created an environment where she thrived.
“Yale is a wonderfully humane place to study the law. It changed the trajectory of my life,” Lou says.
After graduating, Lou joined top-ranked law firm Covington & Burling in Washington, DC, where she focused on antitrust law. It was there that she met an influential mentor, a “dynamite attorney” who lifted up junior attorneys.
“She gave me practical advice on how to navigate the world of big law firms and how to succeed,” Lou says. “She was someone who believed in me and didn’t hold back from telling me so.”
Lou stayed at Covington for just over two years. Then she made a career move that provided her with courtroom litigation experience and laid the groundwork for her current role at DaVita. She followed her now-husband, then an officer in the US Air Force, to Boise, Idaho, and took a job in the criminal division of the US Attorney’s Office in the District of Idaho.
Moving from a large firm in DC to a smaller legal market in Idaho was “a leap of faith,” Lou says. But in the end, “from a professional standpoint, it was probably the best move I could have made.” Lou’s experience with investigations and litigation at the US Attorney’s Office now informs her role defending DaVita. “You have insight into the playbook,” Lou says.
At the close-knit US Attorney’s Office in Idaho, Lou ran all her own cases and gained significant trial and appellate experience. She never had to wait for the “interesting, sophisticated cases,” the way she may have if she had practiced in a larger district. “I got them right from the beginning,” Lou says.
She also learned the importance of the “people element” of law. “Being smart only gets you so far,” she says. “It’s just as important to be personable and well liked by juries, judges, colleagues, and adversaries. After a certain point, success and fulfillment come from relationships.”
“It’s important to check in with yourself periodically to see if you’re doing the work that you want to be doing.”
Melissa Lou
At DaVita, which provides kidney dialysis services through a network of 2,675 outpatient centers in the US, Lou leads a team of attorneys and paralegals in the Office of Special Counsel. Government payors comprise a significant portion of DaVita’s business. Lou and her team defend DaVita in all government investigations.
“Dialysis is expensive, and a lot of the company’s patients are Medicare patients. So when you have a business receiving substantial government funds, inevitably there’s going to be heightened scrutiny,” Lou says.
Reflecting on her own experience, Lou advises law students to be wary of the “echo chamber” driving graduates toward clerkships and top-ranked law firms. “There’s a sense that you can’t go wrong chasing those paths because they’re prestigious and they keep doors open,” she says. “But it’s important to check in with yourself periodically to see if you’re doing the work that you want to be doing. Don’t just want what the people around you want because that feels like the right thing to be chasing.”
