Adjunct Professor Deborah Wald is the founder of the Wald Law Group, specializing in family formation, adoption, divorce, and dissolution legal services. She speaks regularly on contemporary family issues and participates in numerous professional organizations, including the National Family Law Advisory Council for the National Center for Lesbian Rights; the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association; the Academy of California Family Formation Lawyers; the Academy of California Adoption Lawyers; Our Family Coalition, the San Francisco Bay Area's largest LGBT family organization; as well as Circulo de Vida, which provides Spanish-language support services to Latinos with cancer. Wald is also an experienced criminal defense attorney, primarily focusing on indigent criminal appeals. She was a founder of Women Defenders, which provides professional, technical, and social support networks for female criminal defense practitioners, and worked as a public defender in Alameda County for five years.