Melissa Benson joined the Housing Practice Group at LASCO (then LASC) in August of 2015 and is currently Senior Managing Attorney. She litigates cases protecting the rights of low-income tenants, including eviction prevention, maintaining housing subsidies, ensuring safe living conditions in rental housing, and the abatement of public nuisances in unsafe rental housing. Melissa was lead counsel in T&R Properties v. Wimberly, the Tenth District Court of Appeals case stopping the practice of eviction by affidavit in Franklin County. Prior to joining LASCO, Melissa worked for nearly ten years as an attorney in the Chillicothe office of LASCO (then SEOLS), where her primary practice areas were housing, consumer protection, family and public benefits law. Before obtaining her law degree from Case Western Reserve University in 2005, Melissa worked as a journalist in Cleveland, Ohio.

Bar Admissions and Activities

• Bar admissions – Ohio (2005)
• Bar admissions – U.S. District Court Northern District of Ohio (2006)
• Bar admissions – U.S. District Court Southern District of Ohio (2009)
  

Activities and Bar Associations

• Columbus Bar Association
• National Lawyers Guild
• Ohio Housing Law Task Force, Co-Chair 2019-2020
• Columbus Women’s Commission Eviction Working Group
  

Education

• Ohio University (B.S.J. 1999)
• Indiana University (M.A. work 1999-2001)
• Case Western Reserve University (J.D. 2005)