Barbara Murphy Melby

Partner

Barbara Melby is a partner in the Global Outsourcing, Technology, and Commercial Transactions Practice at Morgan Lewis. Ms. Melby is recognized as a leading outsourcing attorney, regularly counseling clients in structuring, negotiating, re-aligning, and terminating information technology (IT) outsourcing and business process outsourcing (BPO) relationships, including human resources (HRO), finance and accounting, procurement, research and development, logistics, and facilities outsourcing. Her experience includes working on transactions for onshore, offshore, managed, and co-sourced solutions. 

In addition to outsourcing, Ms. Melby assists clients with a wide spectrum of technology and data acquisition, implementation and services agreements, including ERP implementation, licensing, software as a service (SaaS), data acquisition and services, cloud computing, and mobility agreements. She also works with clients in support of sourcing and supply chain operation, developing contracting and governance strategies for outsourcing and general commercial transaction portfolios. Ms. Melby is a thought leader in addressing legal issues arising with emerging service models, inducing cloud, SaaS, laaS, and data solutions.

Ms. Melby represents a large and diverse client base, including in the life sciences, hospitality, financial institution, energy, health, and retail industries. Her recent outsourcing experience includes completing an industry-leading global multitower IT and business process outsourcing transaction for a leading pharmaceutical company, a global IT outsourcing agreement for a leading hospitality company, the renegotiation and restructuring of a long-term, multitower IT and business process outsourcing transaction, a global financial and accounting services outsourcing (FAO) transaction, a global human resources outsourcing (HRO) transaction, and a warehousing and logistics outsourcing. In addition to outsourcing, Ms. Melby has assisted numerous clients in negotiations relating to the implementation of complex ERP systems and has coordinated support of commercial contracts for direct and indirect spend for the global procurement organizations of several Fortune 500 companies.

One of the leading outsourcing attorneys in the United States, Ms. Melby co-authored two of the seminal works in the outsourcing field, Information Technology Outsourcing: Process, Strategies, and Contracts (John Wiley, 2005) and Business Process Outsourcing: Process, Strategies, and Contracts (John Wiley, 2007). Ms. Melby was recently recognized by Chambers USA and by Chambers Global as one of the leading lawyers for business process outsourcing. Ms. Melby has also been named as "HRO Attorney of the Year 2007" by the Human Resources Outsourcing Association and one of the 2006, 2007, and 2008 HRO Superstars by HRO Today magazine.

In addition to her two books, she has written numerous articles and has been widely quoted in a wide variety of publications including CIO Magazine, HR Executive, ITWorld, HRO Today, The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel, and The Pennsylvania Lawyer. Ms. Melby is also a frequent speaker on outsourcing and technology transactions at various business, legal, and professional conferences.

Ms. Melby is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and New York.