Emily Dudak Leiter - Madison, WI

Emily is a persistent and compassionate advocate for our clients. She strives to be creative and pragmatic in her work on behalf of children and families. She has a special interest in helping immigrant children and LGBTQ families. She was the lead attorney in a 2014 appeal in Wisconsin about applying the marital presumption of parentage to married same-sex couples post-marriage equality. She represents children and families all over the world in immigration, adoption, and assisted reproduction matters.

PRACTICE AREAS

Immigration
Adoption (domestic and international)
Appeals
Assisted Reproduction
Surrogacy (including domestic and international)
LGBTQ Family Formation and Protection (including parentage, adoption, guardianship, contracts, and estate planning)
Life and Estate Planning
Marital Property and Cohabitation Agreements
Yoga Law
Animal Law

EDUCATION

Emily earned her law degree cum laude from Tulane University Law School in 2005. She earned her B.A. summa cum laude from Arizona State University in 2000, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Emily externed for then-Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the Honorable Judge Sarah S. Vance of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans.

COMMUNITY AND PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Emily is the former Vice President of the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys (AAAA). She has been an active fellow in AAAA since 2011. In 2015, she co-authored the AAAA Position Paper submitted to the Hague Conference on Public International Law in the Netherlands, which proposes a treaty framework to regulate international surrogacy arrangements. Through AAAA, she also authored a piece of national legislation regarding citizenship of children adopted abroad, which passed in 2013.

Emily serves on the Board of the Children and the Law Section of the State Bar of Wisconsin, an elected position, where she applies her experience with immigrant children and LGBTQ families to assist with state legislation. Currently, she is working on a parentage bill for assisted reproduction and several adoption reform bills.

Emily likes to write and has written articles for the Wisconsin Lawyer, and she co-authored the LGBTQ family formation and protection chapter of the Wisconsin State Bar book entitled “Advising the Evolving Family.” She is also the author of updates to the State Bar book entitled “Voluntary Termination of Parental Rights and Adoption.”

Emily also likes public speaking. She is a frequent speaker at the national conferences of AAAA and has spoken for the State Bar of Wisconsin, judges, social workers, and guardians ad litem.

Emily donates her time to the community by providing frequent pro bono and reduced fee representation to undocumented children in their immigration matters throughout Wisconsin, as well as to LGBTQ families fighting to implement marriage and parentage equality in Wisconsin.

PERSONAL

Emily enjoys spending time with her husband, Paul, and their dog, Rosebud. She loves Yoga, bike riding, long-boarding, stand-up paddle boarding, long walks and hikes, and reading. Emily is a Registered Yoga Instructor with Yoga Alliance and teaches privately for lawyers and businesses, including the regular yoga class for The Law Center employees.