CHICAGO, April 28, 2022 — The American Bar Association Solo, Small Firm and General Practice Division will present its 2022 Solo and Small Firm Awards at 5-6 p.m. EDT Friday in a virtual ceremony on the last day of the 2022 Virtual Dispute Resolution Joint Spring Conference.
Melanie Bragg of Bragg Law PC in Houston will receive the Solo and Small Firm Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes exceptional lifetime achievement by a solo or small firm practitioner who is widely accepted by peers as having consistently achieved distinction in an exemplary way. The recipients are viewed by other solo and small firm practitioners as epitomizing the ideals of the legal profession and of solo and small firm practitioners.
Bragg is a former GPSolo chair and currently serves as GPSolo Division Delegate to the ABA House of Delegates. In August she will become the Houston Bar Association ABA House of Delegates delegate. She serves as a trustee on the Texas Bar Foundation and is a member of the Texas Lawyers Assistance Program (TLAP).
Bragg specializes in the areas of probate, real estate and small business representation. She is the author of three books, “HIPAA for the General Practitioner” (ABA, 2009), “Crosstown Park” (Koehler Books, 2013), and “Defining Moments: Insights into the Lawyer’s Soul” (ABA, 2019). She writes a monthly column for the GPSolo eReport and is a frequent CLE, motivational and mindfulness speaker. Click here for a photo of Bragg.
Mark E. Sullivan of the Law Offices of Mark E. Sullivan P.A. in Raleigh, North Carolina, will receive the Solo and Small Firm Trainer Award, which recognizes attorneys who have made significant contributions to educating lawyers or law students regarding the opportunities and challenges of a solo and small firm practice.
Sullivan is a retired Army Reserve JAG colonel and a board-certified specialist in family law. He also is a fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers and author of “The Military Divorce Handbook: A Practical Guide to Representing Military Personnel and Their Families” (ABA, 3rd Edition, 2019). He was co-founder of the military committee of the North Carolina State Bar in 1981, and is a past chair of the military committee of the ABA Family Law Section.
Sullivan received the ABA Grassroots Advocacy Award in 2014 for his work on military custody statutes and the Uniform Deployed Parents Custody and Visitation Act. He assists attorneys nationwide in drafting military pension division orders and consulting on military divorce issues. For a photo of Sullivan, click here.
With more than 21,000 members, the ABA Solo, Small Firm and General Practice Division is committed to providing unique resources exclusively for solo, small-firm and general practitioners, who represent half of the nation’s lawyers.
The ABA is the largest voluntary association of lawyers in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law.