Bridges joins law firm

Sharon Bridges

Sharon Bridges, current general counsel and immediate past vice president of the National Bar Association, the nation’s oldest and largest national association of predominantly African American lawyers and judges, has joined the law firm of Adams and Reese as a litigation partner in the firm’s Jackson office. Bridges, a former partner of Brunini, Grantham, Grower & Hewes, is an attorney practicing in complex litigation with significant experience in mass tort, product liability, medical malpractice, long term care and commercial litigation.

Bridges is also an integral member of the labor and employment and governmental relations teams at Adams and Reese.

She is a former “Mississippi Woman Lawyer of the Year” by the Mississippi Women Lawyers Association and also one of the “50 Leading Business Women” by the Mississippi Business Journal. In 2010, she received the National Bar’s Presidential Award for Exemplary Service for her term as vice president.

Bridges is undefeated in jury trials for the past five years. She has received more than 1,000 early dismissals on behalf of an asbestos client. Bridges has also achieved several hundred dismissals on behalf of pharmaceutical clients in state and federal courts throughout Mississippi, and in 2009, obtained a dismissal in a medical malpractice suit in front of the Mississippi State Supreme Court.

Bridges formerly served as associate general counsel for Tulane University Medical Center and received a bachelor of science degree in nursing, with honors, from Morris Brown College in Atlanta, becoming a registered nurse, and received her juris doctorate from Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans.

Bridges is a leader both in her community and within the legal profession. In addition to previously serving as vice president for the National Bar, she has served as an advisory board member for the National Bar Association’s Commercial Law and Health Care Law sections. She is on the executive board for the American Association of Nurse Attorneys; an advisory board member of the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL); and, board member for the Mississippi Nurses Association Foundation. She is a Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America and a member of the International Association of Defense Counsel and the Defense Research Institute. As a member of DRI, she served as a presenter during the 2010 DRI Nursing Home Litigation Seminar held in Chicago, where spoke on the topic, “Preparing Nursing Home Employees for Deposition: A Nurse Attorney Perspective.”

In 2006, Bridges was recognized for chairing the first statewide diversity conference, “Diversity: A Corporate Counsel and Corporate Executive Perspective.”