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Elizabeth Schwartz has been practicing law since 1997 and is a nationally recognized advocate for the legal rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) community. She is the author of the book Before I Do: A Legal Guide to Marriage, Gay and Otherwise (The New Press, 2016). While her Miami-based firm works with all clients in matters of family law, estate planning and probate, she has been at the forefront of providing crucial legal protections for LGBTQ+ families. She lectures locally, nationally and internationally about critical topics including the impact of nationwide marriage equality and the continued importance of LGBTQ+ couples protecting their loved ones through estate planning, stepparent and second parent adoption. She focuses her practice in family formation (adoption, insemination, and surrogacy) and dissolution, and handled the first divorce for a same-sex couple in Florida. Elizabeth is board certified by the Florida Bar in Adoption Law, is a fellow of the Academy of Adoption & Assisted Reproduction Attorneys and the Florida Adoption Council, and serves as an adoption intermediary helping make forever families of all kinds. Elizabeth has handled surrogacy for 25 years, assisting intended parents, gestational carriers and egg and sperm donors with their legal needs. She is the co-author of the chapter on surrogacy in the forthcoming Fifteenth Edition of Adoption, Paternity, and Other Florida Family Practice (Florida Bar/LexisNexis, 2024) and author of “LGBT Issues in Surrogacy” in the Handbook of Gestational Surrogacy, ed. E. Scott Sills (Cambridge Press, 2016).

Deborah H. Wald is the founder and managing partner at The Wald Law Group. A Certified Family Law Specialist (certified by the State Bar of California, Board of Legal Specialization), Ms. Wald focuses her practice on meeting the needs of parents and children. She handles parentage disputes, child custody matters, guardianships, assisted reproduction matters (egg donation, sperm donation, surrogacy, embryo agreements and disputes) and adoptions (both uncontested and contested), as well as serving as a court-appointed Parenting Coordinator (PC). Herself the child of a refugee, she also handles Special Immigration Juvenile cases. One of her primary professional focuses is on protecting children from the impacts of family trauma. She serves as Secretary of the California Chapter of the Association of Family & Conciliation Courts (AFCC-CA) and is standing chair of the National Family Law Advisory Council of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights. She is the recent past-president of the Academy of California Adoption-ART Lawyers. In 2022, she was recognized for her longstanding work on behalf of LGBTQ+ families by being named the 2022 Leading Family Law Practitioner by the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association. She is co-author of the chapter on protecting clients post-dissolution in the forthcoming Second Edition of Transgender Family Law.