Episode 213: Lesa Slaughter – The Ultimate Guide to Surrogacy

Slaughter Law Group’s founding partner, Lesa Slaughter, has an international reputation for her strategic, supportive, and forward-thinking legal advice when counseling clients creating their family through gestational surrogacy, egg, sperm, and embryo donation. Lesa’s own personal journey of having children through gestational surrogacy, combined with her 15 years of practice in the field of third-party reproduction and prior experience in the transactional and litigation arenas ensures her clients are educated on the legal, practical, and emotional issues raised when forging a pathway to parentage involving surrogacy, egg donation, embryo donation and sperm donation. 

Since 2009, Lesa and her team at Slaughter Law Group have helped tens of thousands of intended parents from all over the globe become mothers and fathers through third party reproduction. Lesa provides legal expertise, compassion and a unique insight and understanding of the clients she serves that few other attorneys in the field of third-party reproduction offer. 

Receiving her undergraduate degree from New York University, Lesa received her juris doctorate degree from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, California in 1999, where she received a number of academic awards. Lesa’s practice began with the international firm of Skadden, Arps, and Slate & Meagher LLP where her litigation and transactional skills were honed in representing large private and Fortune 500 companies on a number of international and domestic matters. In 2009, Lesa left large firm life and opened her own law firm, known today as Slaughter Law Group, a boutique firm advising clients on gestational surrogacy, egg, embryo, and sperm donation matters.

Lesa has also been an Adjunct Professor at Loyola Law School, and has served three former Los Angeles Mayors. She was Chief of Staff to former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, served as a City of Los Angeles Commissioner for multiple terms under Los Angeles Mayors Hahn and Villagarosa. Lesa has worked on a number of state-wide campaigns and received several civic awards. 

The go to expert in the rapidly changing landscape of assisted reproductive technology, Lesa has been quoted in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and been a featured speaker on the issue of gestational surrogacy in the United States and abroad, including Australia, Canada, Italy, and Sweden. Licensed in California, she is a member of the California State Bar, the American Bar Association’s Assisted Reproductive Technologies sub-section, and the Legal Professional Group of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.

Listen as Lesa shares with Ellen and Jenn:

• Having 15 year old surrogate-born twins. 
• Starting out with a few agency and attorney names and having to take it from there.
• Being matched with a unicorn of a surrogate: previous experience as a surrogate, surrogate-friendly insurance, not working, and great supportive spouse
• Surrogate relocating from across the country to California for delivery. 
• Writing a book to share what she learned from her own experience and decades of representing clients going through surrogacy. 
• A majority of her clients being from other countries and facing the uncertainty of getting their babies home in the midst of the level battle over birth right citizenship.
• International shifts in surrogacy from Italian criminalization to Latin American countries becoming the new go-to hot spots.
• Some of the key issues when starting out: choosing a good agency, birth preferences, coping mechanisms for stress, etc. 
• Great progress in big name companies offering surrogacy benefits for employees
• The need for licensure of agencies (in all states, not just New York). 
• Her book, "The Ultimate Guide for Intended Parents to Gestational...