Melissa Salinas is director of Michigan Law's Federal Appellate Litigation Clinic, in which second- and third-year law students litigate criminal and habeas corpus appeals in federal court on behalf of indigent clients.

Before joining the faculty, Salinas was the appellate director for the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of Ohio. She has litigated or supervised more than 200 appeals in federal court. Before law school, Salinas worked in Miami as a financial systems manager for the Latin America division of Federal Express and was a bilingual elementary school teacher in Denver.