Emily Doskow has been practicing law in the Bay Area since 1989. She was among the first wave of lawyers to represent lesbian parents in second parent adoptions, and has completed well over 200 second parent and domestic partner adoptions. She is a frequent speaker about LGBT adoption and parenting issues, and is the coauthor of Nolo’s Do Your Own California Adoption: A Guide for Stepparents and Domestic Partners. She sits on the Board of Directors of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

A 1989 graduate of Boalt Hall School of Law (UC Berkeley), Emily spent years litigating cases on behalf of HIV and cancer patients wrongly denied insurance benefits, and on behalf of women and girls who suffered sexual abuse by landlords, teachers, doctors, and therapists. One of these cases resulted in a settlement with the Berkeley Unified School District that required thorough training of all district employees in abuse issues. Another resulted in a published opinion of the federal court, setting out a significant new rule in ADA accessibility for people associating with HIV-positive individuals.

More recently, Emily has focused her practice on LGBT family law.

Emily’s commitment has always been to using the law for the dual goals of furthering social justice and helping individuals protect their rights to live free from discrimination, in their family structure of choice.

In addition to her private law practice, Emily works as an author and editor for Nolo, the nation’s premier legal publisher of legal and business self-help books and software, and offers legal editing services to attorneys. She is the author of Nolo’s Essential Guide to Divorce and coauthor of A Legal Guide for Lesbian & Gay Couples and many other Nolo titles.