Genie Miller Gillespie

GENIE MILLER GILLESPIE, partner at Gillespie Law Group, LLC, has had her own practice in Chicago since 2001, concentrating exclusively in adoption, guardianship, assisted reproductive technology and other issues relating to children and families. She was President of the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys from 2020 to 2022; is an Illinois Leading Lawyer and Super Lawyer in the areas of adoption and assisted reproductive technology; and a member of the National Council for Adoption, Chicago Bar Association and American Bar Association. In 2016, she was recognized as an Angel in Adoption by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute in Washington, DC. She was one of a limited number of attorneys appointed as guardian ad litem in adoption cases in Cook County for fourteen years. She was one of the co-founders and prior Legal Services Director for the Center for Law and Social Work, now called Greenlight Family Services, where she also worked part-time until 2011. From 2006 through 2008, she was the Director of the ABA Child Custody and Adoption Pro Bono Project. She is the General Editor and chapter author for the IICLE Adoption Law Manual and has written numerous training materials regarding adoption law. She has spoken at numerous seminars and meetings related to adoption for attorneys, agencies, foster parents and prospective adoptive parents and has been the chair of the Chicago Bar Association Adoption Law Committee twice. She has appeared in two episodes of Illinois Law, the Illinois State Bar Association cable television show, regarding domestic and international adoptions. Prior to starting her own practice, she served as the Pro Bono Director at the Chicago Bar Foundation; was in private practice with a small firm handling domestic relations and mental health matters; and spent her first year after law school clerking for the Honorable Wendell P. Gardner, Jr., at the Superior Court for the District of Columbia. She received her B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis, and her law degree from the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America.