Canada, Career Alternatives

The View From Up North: A Lawyer Who Helps You Make Babies

Meet a lawyer who spends her entire day assisting couples who are having difficulty navigating the complex world of assisted reproduction.

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Another week, another profile of a lawyer doing something non-lawyery (is that a word?) with her life.

How many couples suffer through the heartache of not being able to get pregnant? I have heard it said being diagnosed with infertility is as emotionally devastating to some people as being diagnosed with cancer. I can believe it.

Meet Rhonda Levy. She’s an ex-Biglaw lawyer who worked at several prominent law firms in Toronto. But her story starts more than two decades ago at a very important point in her life — near the beginning of her marriage when she and her husband were trying to have children.

Try as they might, Rhonda and her husband could not conceive. To assist in the process, she turned to modern medicine. She went through three failed cycles of artificial insemination and four failed cycles of in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Before each attempt, she and her husband would swell with great hope. Each time it failed, Rhonda would slip into a deep depression.

She finally turned the corner in the mid-90s when she realized she had to take charge of her own destiny. She couldn’t simply rely on the glossy marketing materials fertility clinics produced to trumpet their successes. She fanatically studied medical research on assisted reproduction. Through her efforts, she honed in on a fertility clinic she thought could solve her infertility.

Turns out her research paid off. The fifth cycle of IVF was a success — a double success, actually — Rhonda and her husband welcomed healthy twin boys to the world in 1996. After years of struggle and heartbreak, I can only imagine the overwhelming feeling of joy and gratitude Rhonda and her husband experienced while holding their sons for the first time.

In 1998, Rhonda continued to work full time as a lawyer, but added a part time job — fertility consultant. Last year, she hung up her full-time shingle called Empowered IVF™ and spends her entire day assisting couples who are having difficulty navigating the complex world of assisted reproduction.

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I had a dialogue with Rhonda. Here is more on how she helps people in her own words.

Steve M. Dykstra: What exactly do you do?

Rhonda Levy: I am a consultant who advises people who need IVF and the help of fertility clinics to have a baby. My clients are heterosexual and LGBT couples and individuals throughout the world who are interested in building their families with Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) in the United States or Canada. I educate them about the world of ART so they can make smart and discerning choices and avoid common pitfalls. I am committed to ensuring that my clients know everything they need to know to be their own best advocates. I put cutting edge fertility clinics on their radar screens to help them make smart choices. My goal is to save them time, money, and heartache, and improve their likelihood of having a baby. I help my clients understand the subtleties and nuances of success rate interpretation and provide information about the latest treatment options. If required, I help my clients understand how to select agencies (egg donor, surrogacy, and embryo donation), egg banks, and sperm banks, as well as reproductive lawyers and mental health professionals who specialize in infertility and third party reproduction.

SMD: Why is there a need for your services? Aren’t all fertility clinics the same?

RL: No, fertility clinics are not the same. There is a significant disparity in the quality of fertility clinics and the patient’s choice of clinic can make all the difference between whether they will or will not ultimately have a baby. When asked this question I sometimes use the analogy of a kitchen. When you eat a meal you are not guaranteed a delectable, gourmet meal just because it has been prepared in a kitchen. The quality of the meal depends on the quality of the appliances in the kitchen, the ingredients used and the training, and skill of the chef. Similarly, a patient’s likelihood of having a baby with the help of a fertility clinic is not guaranteed just because they are using a fertility clinic. Patients have dramatically better odds of having a baby if they use a fertility clinic where the doctors have strong clinical skills, the laboratory is cutting edge, and the embryologists have received excellent training and have world class skills.

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My services are needed because patients need to be educated about these realities by someone who is a neutral “insider” and expert and does not have a financial vested interest in a specific fertility clinic. Reproductive medicine is a billion dollar industry and medical entrepreneurship is a reality of this world. A physician will “sell” his or her fertility clinic to the patient even when he or she knows that a competitor’s clinic can offer much better odds for the patient’s success. Infertility patients need to spend their money wisely and become educated quickly because they have to keep time on their side.

SMD: How often do clients come to you with nightmare stories, similar to your own, of one failed IVF procedure after another?

RL: Almost all my clients have had multiple IVF failures, as it is the most desperate patients who seek out my services. I wish patients would consult with me before even walking into a fertility clinic so they could make the best possible choices from the outset. So many clients end their consultations telling me they wish they had consulted with me sooner.

SMD: Do you find that clients are intimidated by the whole process of dealing with fertility doctors?

RL: People who are dependent on physicians to have a baby feel very vulnerable to them. They are often afraid to ask penetrating questions because they want the doctor to see them as “good patients.” The thought process is, “If I am a good patient, the doctor will work harder to help me.” I don’t think this is unique to fertility patients. As a society, we have put all doctors on a pedestal and the vast majority of patients seem to be intimidated by them.

SMD: How much of your job is simple interpretation and education — helping people digest the vast amount of complex medical information being thrown at them by doctors and the internet?

RL: My job is approximately 90% interpretation and education and 10% advocacy. People who enter this world enter a foreign and daunting maze filled with complex medical concepts. They are also faced with aggressive marketing that, in their desperation and vulnerability, they often become victims of. Reliance on the internet for information is a mistake because a lot of what is found there is incorrect and misleading. Neutral interpretation and education by an independent expert can be extremely helpful.

SMD: How often do you work with clients that, despite your best efforts and the help of terrific doctors, just can’t get pregnant?

RL: This certainly happens sometimes, most often when by the time the client approaches me she is of advanced age. By then she often has few eggs left and those that remain are, in large part, chromosomally abnormal and incapable of creating a healthy baby. Even the most powerful fertility clinics cannot turn an abnormal egg into a normal one. Some of these women decide to turn to egg donors for help and become pregnant with donated eggs.

SMD: If you were put in charge of how fertility clinics are run in Canada, what is the most important change you would make?

RL: Unlike the US and the UK, Canada does not have a central registry where fertility clinic success rates are made publicly available. Some fertility clinics provide success rates on their websites but often in a manner that is misleading and lacking in transparency. I think such a central registry is important from a consumer protection point of view and I would make one available in Canada.

That’s The View From Up North. Have a great week.

Steve Dykstra is a Canadian-trained lawyer and legal recruiter. He is the President of Keybridge Legal Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm that places lawyers in law firms and in-house roles throughout North America. You can contact Steve at steve@keybridgerecruiting.com. You can also read his blog at stevendykstra.wordpress.com, follow him on Twitter (@IMRecruitR), or connect on LinkedIn (ca.linkedin.com/in/stevedykstra/).

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