Staff
Joan Bibelhausen
Executive Director
Annette Erbst
Administrative Assistant
Chase Andersen
Case Manager
Joan Bibelhausen has served as Executive Director of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers since 2005. She is an attorney and is nationally recognized for her work in the lawyer assistance and diversity and inclusion realms. Joan has significant additional training in counseling, mental health and addiction, diversity, employment issues, and management. She has spent more than two decades working with lawyers, judges, and law students at a crossroads because of mental illness and addiction concerns and well-being, stress, and related issues.
Joan has developed and presented numerous CLE and other programs throughout Minnesota and nationally and has written on mental health and addiction, implicit bias and mental health, career and life balance and satisfaction, stress, diversity and inclusion, marketing, and other issues concern to the legal profession. She is active in the MN State Bar Association, Hennepin and Ramsey County and American Bar Associations, and MN Women Lawyers. She has served on the ABA Commission on Lawyers Assistance Programs (CoLAP) and its Advisory Commission. She has chaired CoLAP’s Education Committee and its 2016 Conference Planning Committee. She has chaired the MSBA Life and the Law Committee and the HCBA Solo and Small Firm Practice Section and has co-chaired the HCBA Diversity Committee. She represents the disability perspective on many bar-related diversity committees and initiatives, including the MSBA Diversity and Inclusion Council. Joan also served on the MSBA Board of Governors, HCBA’s Strategic Planning and Leadership Institute task forces, and the Northstar Problem Gambling Alliance board.
Joan coauthored “Stress and Resiliency in the US Judiciary” for the ABA 2020 Journal of the Professional Lawyer, “Reducing the Stigma – William Mitchell College of Law – Spring 2015“, published in the Mitchell Hamline Law Review (Vol. 41, Issue 3), and frequently writes for Minnesota and national bar publications. Minnesota Lawyer recognized her with a 2017 Diversity and Inclusion Award for her work regarding implicit bias and mental health in the legal profession.
Annette Erbst joined Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers as its Administrative Assistant in 2008. Annette has an A.S. in Accounting, an A.S. in Management, and significant additional training in nonprofit technology.
Chase Andersen, Esq., has always been committed, both personally and professionally, to assisting individuals in need. Chase received his B. S. in Criminal Justice with a minor in English from the University of South Dakota, located in Vermillion, South Dakota. Following undergraduate school, Chase worked several years in the social services arena as a counselor and then a social worker. In 2006, Chase earned his J. D. (with a Concentration in Litigation and Dispute Resolution) from Drake University Law School in Des Moines, Iowa. Since then, Chase has practiced in the private sector and understands the challenges and stressors facing law students and attorneys.
Chase has been a member of the Minnesota State Bar Association, Hennepin, Ramsey and Anoka County Bar Associations, the Minnesota Association for Justice (formerly known as the Minnesota Trial Lawyers Association), and other professional and community organizations and associations. He has served as a Co-Chair for the Minnesota Association for Justice’s Family Law Section and has facilitated and participated in several continuing legal education programs. In 2014 and 2015, Chase was honored as a “Rising Star” attorney by Super Lawyers Magazine and was recognized by the Minnesota State Bar Association as a 2014 North Star Attorney for his pro bono legal services. Chase also serves on the Board of Directors for the University of South Dakota’s Alumni Association. Chase enjoys running, golfing, bicycling, traveling, and spending time with his friends and family in his spare time.