Total Credits: 7.25 including 6.25 CLE, 1 Ethics
We’re headed to the beach and hope you will join us! This weekend seminar is designed for attorneys who handle Family Law and Juvenile Cases. Experts will highlight the practice-based tools for managing the most complex cases in Domestic Practice.
Perdido Beach Resort
Call the Perdido Beach Resort at 1-800-634-8001 to make your room reservation while our room block last. Rooms will be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis and there are a limited number of rooms available. Please identify yourself as part of CLE Retreat to the Beach - booking ID# 20508. Our room block expires September 24!
GAL Recertification
This session is being offered to attorneys wishing to maintain their status as a guardian ad litem in juvenile dependency cases. The recertification is approved for 3 CLE hours which includes one hour of ethics. You must be currently certified to attend this course.
Registration Fee: $95 Course time is 8:20 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Registration is completed separately from Retreat to the Beach. Participants must register online at: https://conferences.alacourt.gov
Registration after September 19 will have a late fee of $50.00. The registration deadline is September 26.
Checks should be made payable to AJCFA and mailed to:
Alabama Judicial College 300 Dexter Avenue Montgomery, AL 36104
Call the AOC for more information: 1-866-954-9411, ext. 7115
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.
Ms. Hendrix received her B.A. and M.A. from The University of Alabama. She received her J.D. from The University of Alabama School of Law. She has been an Assistant Attorney General for the Alabama Department of Human Resources State Legal Office since 2004.
Scott Donaldson was a Judge on the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals from 2013 until retiring in 2021 and was a circuit judge from 2003-2013. Before taking office, he had an extensive trial and appellate law practice for 18 years. Donaldson was also the Chief Judge of the Court of the Judiciary (the court that adjudicates all complaints filed against Alabama judges). He served on the Alabama State Bar Commission and State Bar Disciplinary Commission and is a current or former chair or member of numerous other judicial and legal committees including the Evidence Committee, the Civil Pattern Jury Instructions Committee, and the Appellate Rules Committee. He has been an attorney or trial judge in approximately 180 jury trials and in hundreds of bench trials. After retiring from the bench, Donaldson had an active mediation, arbitration, trial and appellate law practice. He is currently the General Counsel for the DCH Health System.
Donaldson is a faculty member of the National Judicial College and has taught many four-day evidence courses to hundreds of trial judges across the country. He has also taught evidence courses for 13 state judicial associations, the ABA Tort, Trial & Insurance Practice Section, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and for the judges of the United States Patent Trial and Appeal Board. He teaches evidence and trial skills courses for the Alabama Circuit/District Judges Associations including new judge orientation sessions and for the Probate Judges Association. Donaldson taught Trial Advocacy at the University of Alabama School of Law each semester from 2006-2022 and was an instructor for the 40-hour Domestic Relations/Civil mediator training course for alabamamediationtraining.com. He is a frequent speaker at continuing legal education programs and has authored numerous legal articles as well as the Alabama Trial Notebook, published by the University of Alabama School of Law CLE program. He is a Fellow of the Alabama Law Foundation and Vice-President of the Board of Directors.
Heather Fann is a founding partner of the newly formed Gregory Fann, along with Sandi Gregory, and a native of Piedmont, Alabama. She graduated cum laude from The University of Alabama School of Law in 2006. Heather is a past Chair of the Family Law Section of th Alabama State Bar Association and teaches Domestic Relations and Advanced Domestic Relations at Cumberland School of Law as an adjunct professor. In 2017, she was selected as for the Leading Practitioner Award by the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association, for her work on marriage and parentage equality cases including the U.S. Supreme Court case of V.L. v E.L. She serves on the board of the ACLU of Alabama and has additionally served on the boards of the Birmingham Volunteer Lawyers Program and Birmingham AIDS Outreach. Heather’s practice is devoted entirely to family law, and she practices primarily in Jefferson, Shelby, Tuscaloosa, Blount, Calhoun, and St. Clair counties but is open to cases anywhere in the state with novel legal issues related to LGBTQ+ rights. Heather’s passions are justice, equality, 90’s music, and her 7-year-old son, Everett.
Sarah advises clients across the full spectrum of cybersecurity risk management, including proactive advisory and compliance services, risk assessments, technology contracts and vendor risk management, and security incident response. As an ANSI-Accredited Certified Information Privacy Professional/United States (CIPP/US) from the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), Sarah has extensive experience guiding clients through the legal and business aspects of cyber risk mitigation.
She has performed hundreds of cybersecurity risk assessments for private equity portfolio companies and has advised a variety of organizations, from Fortune 500 companies to tech start-ups, across all industry verticals. Clients appreciate Sarah’s ability to simplify the complex and handle high pressure situations with an even-keeled manner, focusing on pragmatic business solutions to cyber risk issues. She is a frequent speaker and author on cybersecurity risk management topics and former adjunct cybersecurity law professor. Ms. Glover received her J.D., magna cum laude, from The University of Alabama School of Law and holds a B.A., summa cum laude, from The University of Alabama.
Juliana Taylor attended Mississippi State University and obtained a Bachelor of Science Degree in Agriculture and a Master’s Degree in German. She obtained her JD from Jones School of Law in 1996 and has practiced in Montgomery, Alabama, as a solo since that year, with the primary focus of her practice being in family and juvenile law. Ms. Taylor currently serves on the State Court Improvement Project Advisory Committee. She has been a certified Guardian ad Litem since 2004 and has taught Guardian Ad Litem certification and re-certification courses for the AOC for the past several years.
Dr. Mary Elizabeth Curtner-Smith is Associate Professor Emerita in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Her research focuses on child development, the effects of parental divorce on children, and parent-child attachment relationships. She consults on child custody cases and is trained to assist disputing parents mediate parenting plans. She has worked on the Parenting Plans Project with colleagues from the Alabama Law Institute in Tuscaloosa, Alabama since 2014
Ms. Creech practices in the area of family law and is a registered family-law mediator. She is also trained in the area of Collaborative Law. She regularly teaches continuing legal education courses on family-law issues. Amy has served as President of the Family Law Section of the Alabama State Bar; as a member of the Alabama Law Institute’s Standing Legislative Committee; Madison County Bar Executive Committee; on the Pro-Bono task force for the Alabama State Bar; and was on the Board of Directors of the Madison County Volunteer Lawyers Program. She is an Alabama Law Foundation Fellow; was the 2014 Family Law Section Attorney of the Year; and the recipient of the Alabama State Bar’s Albert L. Vreeland Award. She received her B.A. from The University of Alabama and her J.D. from The University of Alabama School of Law. She is the sole practitioner at her firm, Creech Family Law, in Huntsville.
Amber Yerkey James is the founder and Founder and Visionary at New Beginnings Family Law, P.C., a boutique matrimonial and family law practice located in Huntsville, Alabama. Amber’s main areas of practice are divorce, child custody, parental alienation, mediation, adoption and surrogacy.
Prior to opening her own practice, Ms. James worked in the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, Alabama in the Domestic Relations Division as a law clerk for the Honorable Ralph A. Ferguson, Jr. and in the firm of Shaw-Anderson, LLC. Ms. James earned her B.A. in Music and M.B.A. degrees from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and her Juris Doctorate from the Birmingham School of Law in 2006. She is admitted to practice in Alabama and before the U.S. Supreme Court. She is also a board-certified family law trial advocate having received her board certification from the National Board of Trial Advocacy. Ms. James is a member of the Alabama State Bar and the American Bar Associations, Morgan County, and Huntsville-Madison County Bar associations. Amber is also a member of the Women’s Economic Development Council, the Women’s Business Council of the Huntsville Madison County Chamber of Commerce, and the Board of Directors of the AUM Foundation.
New Beginnings Family Law, P.C. has been recognized on the Law Firm 500 list of fastest growing law firms on two occasions. In 2020, Amber was recognized as the Female Entrepreneur of the Year by the Catalyst Center for Business and Entrepreneurship and her firm was chosen as the Professional Services Business of the Year in 2020 by the Huntsville Madison County Chamber of Commerce. New Beginnings Family Law, P.C. is consistently recognized as one of the Best Places to Work in Huntsville, Alabama and received the designation of Best Place for Working Parents.
