Ms. Mehan tried more than thirty-five cases to a jury as a deputy public defender in Los Angeles and Contra Costa Counties, handling matters from intake through verdict and appeal. In Los Angeles County, she was appointed to train incoming deputy public defenders — a role assigned to the office's experienced trial attorneys — and tried a range of contested cases, including a three-week jury trial involving fifteen witnesses.
In Contra Costa County, she briefed an appeal, drafted and argued numerous pretrial and trial motions, and carried a substantial criminal caseload, and she successfully advocated to make civil conservatorship placement hearings standard practice in the county.
Before entering public defense, Ms. Mehan practiced commercial litigation at Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin in San Francisco, where she represented the Oakland Raiders in their fraud case against the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum and handled white-collar, bankruptcy, contract, and class-action disputes.
Earlier in her career, she worked as a litigation consultant at the Law & Economics Consulting Group, applying economic and financial analysis to antitrust, intellectual-property, and energy matters for law firms and corporations.