The Law Offices of Denise M. Bierly

The Law Offices of Denise M. Bierly brings not just credentials and experience to our cases, but also a unique, personal level of compassion that exists because our attorneys have had first-hand experience with adoption and surrogacy in their own families. Attorney Denise M. Bierly is a parent both by birth and adoption, and attorney Joshua D. Gitelson’s extended family became complete through their own surrogacy journey.

Denise and Joshua are both Fellows of the American Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys, whose members are extensively experienced in all types of family-building cases and adhere to the highest standard of ethics and competence.

Office manager and paralegal Meshia G. Calhoun has been the nerve center of our firm since 2004 and has worked almost exclusively in family-building since finishing her degree in paralegal studies.

Collectively, we have approximately sixty years of experience in family formation and have assisted with more than two thousand adoption and assisted reproduction matters. Handling clients in Pennsylvania and Illinois, we are proud to be able to provide our clients with a degree of personal service that many larger firms cannot match.

Denise was awarded her undergraduate degree from the Pennsylvania State University in 1987, and earned her Juris Doctor Degree from the Dickinson School of Law of the Pennsylvania State University in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1990.

Joshua came to law later in life, having graduated from Yale University in 1992, teaching at an American School in Tangier, Morocco, for a year, and then returning to his hometown of Los Angeles to work as a film editor in the entertainment industry. Joshua graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 2013, and practiced divorce law for three-and-a-half years before transitioning to adoption and assisted reproduction.