Sullivan Receives Family Law Section’s Distinguished Service Award
Mark Sullivan of Sullivan & Hilscher Family Law in Raleigh is the 13th recipient of the NCBA Family Law Section’s Distinguished Service Award. The award was presented last year in conjunction with the section’s annual meeting in Charleston, S.C.
Katie King, who served as chair of the Family Law Section in 2021-22, presented the award.
“This year’s recipient is near and dear to me,” King began, “as he gave me my first job in a law firm 25 years ago, when I was a college student who was thinking about law school. Mark Sullivan – this year’s recipient of our section’s highest honor – is the professional ideal of what a lawyer should be, and I am so grateful that I was able to get my start in the legal profession with someone like Mark to emulate.
“There are many of us who shared that same good fortune – colleagues like my law partner, Nancy Grace, Rose Stout, Debbie Sandlin, Catherine Bailey, Scott Allen, Connie Ludwig, and Bobby Mills – in addition to those lucky enough to practice with Mark in his firm now.”
Sullivan’s professional accomplishments, King continued, are endless.
“His resume of books written, professional recognition, publications, and presentations across the country is 50 pages long! Mark is a brilliant litigator and public speaker. He is the nation’s expert on military family law, and he wrote “The Military Divorce Handbook,” a book many of us have at our offices. Better yet, he is always willing to answer a phone call, respond to an email, and post on the listserv to share his knowledge with all of us.
“Mark is someone who loves the law and to write and talk about the law more than anyone I have ever met. He is someone who promotes and encourages professional development in his associates and colleagues. During a time when our profession has been dominated by the billable hour, Mark has encouraged all of us to serve others –
through groups like our NCBA, teaching opportunities, and pro bono efforts. And as someone who may have been ahead of his time, as a person, Mark is a completely devoted family man. He showed us that you don’t have to sacrifice having a meaningful family life to have a successful legal career.”
Adding to the significance of the moment for Sullivan was the fact that his wife and daughter were in the audience to witness the occasion.
“I followed the usual instructions that we do for speakers, and that is keep it short and simple – less than five minutes,” Sullivan said. “And I presented what I thought was an adequate statement about the importance of giving back to the community, giving back to other lawyers, sharing with other lawyers, and helping other lawyers in this area of the law.
“It is unique because unlike criminal law, where you’re on one side or you’re on the other, or tort law, because whether you’re on one side or the other in family law, you can be on both sides depending on whether it’s the morning or the afternoon. It’s a unique kind of sharing with each other that we do, and I tried to make the point to tell the younger people that this is something you need to do for the rest of your career.”
Sullivan described the recognition as a tremendous honor.
“I never expected it,” Sullivan said. “When I got the phone call about it, I felt a tremendous sense of gratitude because I appreciate doing the work that I do without any recognition whatsoever. So having this recognition toward the end of my career is just the nicest way to wrap things up.”
Sullivan’s involvement with the NCBA, like his practice, has featured a successful blending of family law and military and veterans law.
“It’s fascinating,” Sullivan explained, “because the involvement started when I was the vice chair of the Family Law Section back in 1986. Howard Gum was chair, and I thought that I was going to be the incoming chair. We were vigorously debating the issue of board certification, and people like Howard said that we should not do it because people who are out in the boondocks – out in the rural areas – will never be able to become board certified because they don’t do enough work.
“We were divided along those lines, but eventually we got it passed. Howard and I were in the coronation class of 1989, the very first year we had board certification, along with probably 20 or 30 others. And it has since become a hugely popular area; there are hundreds of people from mountains to coast who are board certified in this area.”
But Sullivan never made it to the position of section chair.
“What happened is that something else I was doing, another service project, intervened. I was going up in the ranks of the Standing Committee for Legal Assistance for Military Personnel (LAMP) of the American Bar Association. That’s a presidential appointment, and I was appointed in 1982 as a member of the standing committee. So, by 1986, when I was next in line to become chairman of the section, I had one year to go on the Standing Committee, and I accepted the appointment as chair of the LAMP Committee for the ABA.
“But that meant that I couldn’t be chair of the NCBA Family Law Section.”
Sullivan’s affinity for military veterans and their service has always figured prominently in his practice, especially as it relates to military divorce. These experiences are also directly related to his involvement with the State Bar and the ABA.
“That’s how I got onto the LAMP Committee in the first place,” Sullivan explained. “Back in 1982, I got a phone call to come down to the State Bar to meet with Bobby James, who was the director of the State Bar at the time, and Robinson Everett, who at that time was trying to start a military committee.
“They sat down with me and said they wanted me to be the director of this program because I knew enough about it to handle it on a day-to-day basis. Robinson Everett is going to be the chair, they said, but I was going to be the behind-the-scenes, go-to guy. And so at that point I helped create the Military Committee of the North Carolina State Bar, and based on that, Robinson Everett nominated me to be a member of the Standing Committee on Legal Assistance for Military Personnel of the ABA. I wound up wearing ‘dual hats’ as we call it in the military; I had one hat on the State Bar side and another hat on the ABA side.”
Fortunately, Sullivan has always found time for the NCBA as well.
“The NCBA has a darn good section for Family Law and also for the military work that is being done by the NCBA,” Sullivan said. “The NCBA also does a wonderful job in providing the opportunity for finding a lawyer and getting a consultation.”
Sullivan has been practicing law for more than 50 years, originally licensed in Ohio in 1970 and licensed reciprocally in North Carolina in 1976. He grew up in Cleveland and attended Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he enrolled in ROTC and was commissioned as an Air Force lieutenant in 1968.
Following his graduation from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1971, Sullivan aspired to become a judge advocate. At that time, however, there were no openings in the Air Force, so Sullivan transferred to the U.S. Army and became a JAG officer there.
He has received numerous awards, including the LAMP Distinguished Service Award from the ABA Standing Committee on Legal Assistance for Military Personnel, the ABA’s Grassroots Advocacy Award, and the Legion of Merit, presented upon his retirement from the Army with the rank of colonel, in recognition of his status as “the Army’s foremost expert in family law.”
The Family Law Section Distinguished Service Award was established “to recognize, and to encourage others to emulate, extraordinary service to the section, the legal profession or the public, above and beyond the call of any official duties to the section, in an endeavor or endeavors relating to the field of family law and the mission and activities of the section.”
Previous recipients of the Family Law Section Distinguished Service Award are:
- Lynn P. Burleson (1990)
- Richard D. Stephens (1991)
- Edgar Moore (1992)
- Fred A. Hicks (1995)
- Joe Hackney (1996)
- Marcia H. Armstrong (1997)
- George K. Walker (2000)
- John H. Parker (2012)
- Carlyn G. Poole (2012)
- Howard L. Gum (2012)
- Shelby Benton (2018)
- Heidi Bloom (2021)
Russell Rawlings is director of external affairs and communications for the North Carolina Bar Association.