Get reasonably pure LA is a pain in the ass, nearly all the hydrolysis lead to brown/black product which as to be purified.
Even with good quality LA the coupling reaction mixture gets brown black and the work up is not as simple as it is stated (maybe if you start with 100% pure precursors, solvents degassed and professional equipment you have a small change of not happening, but for the home chemist dark solution has to be expected).
Purification of the product is no joke if you don't have access to column chromatography or if you don't want to remove liters of solvent under vacuum.