South Carolina attorney honored

The Legal Professionals Program at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is honoring South Carolina attorney Mike Ethridge with its Hazelden Excellence in Legal Community Leadership Award. The award is given annually to recognize an individual who has made significant contributions to attorney wellness and recovery.

“The Legal Professionals Program at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is committed to returning legal professionals suffering from substance use and mental health disorders to a happy, healthy and balanced lifestyle, ” Program Director, Kevin Chandler said. “We stand shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Ethridge in promoting wellness in the legal profession and recognize the outsized contribution he has made to this effort.”

The Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is the nation’s largest nonprofit treatment provider for alcohol and drug addiction. The Legal Professionals Program at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation provides targeted treatment for legal professionals including judges, lawyers, law students and paralegals.

Mike Ethridge was the founding Chair of the South Carolina State Bar’s Attorney Wellness Committee and continues to play an active role in increasing awareness of the need to identify and treat factors that impact the physical and mental well-being of attorneys.

Ethridge lives in Charleston, South Carolina. February 2, 2017, Ethridge resigned as equity partner from the law firm where he had been practicing for the past 28 years to open the Ethridge Law Group, a firm built around his belief that a law firm can succeed financially and still maintain a culture that prioritizes the well being of its attorneys and staff.

The Hazelden Excellence in Legal Community Leadership Award will be presented at the Legal Professionals Retreat April 7, 2017 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Past recipients include: Judge Robert Childers of Tennessee, and Jerome Braun of the San Francisco law firm of Farella Braun & Martel.