Jason Melton

Jason Melton is a plaintiff trial lawyer and founding partner of Whittel & Melton, LLC, a personal injury firm in Spring Hill, Florida. He represents injured people and, drawing on years as a prosecutor, approaches every case by picturing the trial first — an instinct he argues is essential to valuing a claim and moving an insurer.

Melton grew up in San Antonio, Texas, working the register after school at his father’s women’s clothing business, where he learned that reading the person in front of you matters more than the product. Those instincts, he says, carry into the courtroom, where knowing the judge can matter as much as knowing the law.

He began his career as a prosecutor in Miami, one of the busiest jurisdictions in the state, which handed a young lawyer real trials one after another. He is candid that high-volume prosecutor and public defender jobs often produce more trial experience than more prestigious paths.

A detour running a friend’s congressional campaign led to a partnership: that friend, Robert Whittel, is the name beside his own at Whittel & Melton, the firm the two built after Melton went out and learned personal injury work from the ground up. He began practicing civil law in the mid-2000s, and the partners formed the firm in 2009.

Melton is candid that many of his verdicts came in tough jurisdictions, in front of jurors for whom $50,000 is a life-changing sum, and he is proud of the results for that reason. He measures the work as much by the clients who become lasting friends as by outcomes, and encourages established lawyers to give younger ones a seat at trial.