A lawyer who specializes in surrogacy will be required for the second parent adoption as well as to answer any technical questions that will arise as fees begin to accumulate. 
This child (or children) will genetically be linked to myself and an anonymous egg donor, so legally, a second parent adoption will be required to cover any potential parentage issues for Josh. As this process can not start until after the birth and takes approximately 8 months to complete, a lawyer should be placed on retainer to help us with the entire process. Unfortunately, every lawyer that we have contacted has essentially replied with the same message: they have no legal standing to practice in India, so they are unable to provide us with the counsel that we require.
We may have to figure this out on our own until we arrive back in the United States. A family lawyer will be able to procure the second parent adoption, but as far as a surrogacy lawyer goes, we are out of luck. Thankfully, the surrogacy laws in India are unique in that the only names placed on a birth certificate are those with a genetic link to the child. Therefore, I would be the only name listed on the birth certificate, and thus Baby X will be considered a US citizen born abroad, at least according to India. This makes immigration a very easy process, once the US is satisfied with a genetic test proving my parentage.
–Matt
New Dads on the Block 
Odd that there aren’t lawyers to do that task. Lawyers tend to address any market of their services. This would worry me.
I think we will be okay tho… we have retained a lawyer in Mumbai to work with the contract and legalities, so if anyhing goes wrong, then we would have legal standing in India.
Can the clinic recommend an India-based lawyer who is familiar with the surrogacy laws? Given the popularity of gestational surrogacy in India, I’d think lawyers would be creating niche markets for themselves. That said, maybe counsel isn’t really necessary until you fall under U.S. jurisdiction? A bad scenario would be paying a “niche” lawyer who is providing services or guidance that you could have easily handled on your own.
Lauren, I agree. We are definitely going to require a lawyer once we are back on US soil, but I think that retaining one prior to that would be wasteful.
We met a lot of people who had done surrogacy in India at the Center family picnic on Saturday…
We spoke to a NY lawyer before our babies were born and it was helpful. In NY State, surrogacy for compensation is illegal so your surrogacy contract in India cannot be used as evidence that the surrogate has terminated her rights to your child(ren). This will be a problem when pursuing second parent adoption in NY. We got around this by having a court decree from an Indian Judge stating that the surrogate has severed her rights to our twins. If you want more info, just contact me.
Thank you… we are meeting with the lawyer in Mumbai today and will ask him to include this with the other paperwork. I appreciate the message!