Joan-Marie Sullivan has twenty-six years of experience as an attorney.  For the majority of those years, her practice has focused on family law and she has assisted countless clients with divorce and child custody issues.  Ms. Sullivan is also an accomplished appellate attorney.  She has filed numerous briefs in all three of Alabama's appellate courts, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Civil Appeals and the United States Supreme Court.  Her efforts have resulted in many changes to Alabama's legal landscape over the past two and one-half decades.  Ms. Sullivan graduated as valedictorian from Jacksonville Laboratory High School in 1982.  She is a 1985 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Alabama and earned her law degree from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1988.  While in law school, she received national recognition for her trial advocacy skills.  Ms. Sullivan previously practiced law in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and worked at Lanier, Ford, Shaver and Payne and Wolfe, Jones & Boswell in Huntsville, Alabama.  She has been in private practice since 1996.

In addition to maintaining an active trial practice,  Ms. Sullivan has served as the editor for the Alabama Law Weekly for the past nineteen  years.  As part of that position, Ms. Sullivan reads each decision released by Alabama's appellate courts each week and summarizes those cases  so that attorneys and judges around the state can keep abreast of the current law.  Ms. Sullivan is certified as both an appellate and family law mediator.  She is a strong advocate of mediation because of her commitment to resolving disputes between parties in an economical and amicable way whenever possible.  Ms. Sullivan is a frequent lecturer on various legal issues.  She regularly provides training to judges, lawyers and lay-people at numerous seminars across the state.