More Than a Statute It is Wednesday, the third workday of the week, and 27 new civil matters have come through Hampton Law Firm since Monday. Those are not casual inquiries, names on a call sheet, or people who may eventually need something. They are genuine matters involving real people who need real legal help. I am ecstatically happy because the number tells me that what I have spent the last year building is working. I am also fully aware that Hampton Law Firm consists of

For most of my career, I believed Louisiana’s child-protection system existed for one purpose: to protect children. I still believe many of the people working within that system genuinely entered the profession wanting to do exactly that. What I no longer believe is that the system consistently distinguishes between a child facing an actual emergency and a family caught beneath an allegation that should have been investigated before the government began tearing lives apart. I

Supporting the badge doesn’t mean defending everyone who wears it. I remember the blue dress I wore when I was sworn in as a prosecutor. I was pregnant with my son, JB, and a close family friend who had just been elected to the Court of Appeals administered the oath. I was so damn proud that day. I felt like I was following in my daddy’s footsteps and, in a different way, my uncle’s footsteps too. My father had devoted his career to prosecution. My uncle was a law enforcement

From the road, my office looks like the kind of place where a woman in a pretty dress helps somebody sign a will, explains why the family land cannot simply be “put in all the children’s names,” and then goes home at five o’clock with her desk clean, her emails answered and her nervous system largely intact. It is a very convincing building. Hampton Law Firm sits quietly in a small North Louisiana town, painted in calm colors and arranged to make people feel as though whateve

I am going to say this plainly at the beginning so nobody has to read halfway through this article while trying to determine whether I am whispering my opinion behind a decorative hedge: I am on Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill’s side. Plainly, clearly and publicly. That does not mean I believe an attorney general is above the law. It means that when the government indicts its own chief legal officer on sixteen felony counts arising from legal letters she sent while def

Some court days are serious in the way criminal court is supposed to be serious. People are pleading guilty to felonies. Rights are being waived. Sentences are being imposed. The judge is making a record. The lawyers are making sure everything is legally correct, factually clear, and procedurally sound. Then there are other days where all of that is still happening, but somewhere in the middle of the docket a man starts explaining how rats naturally lead to snakes, the State

At one point, I had seven women working in one small law office. Seven intelligent, capable, hardworking women who could handle real estate closings, successions, client calls, filing deadlines, title problems, scheduling disasters, and the occasional software problem that required prayer, threats, and somebody walking away from the computer for twenty seconds before trying again. It was a real office. We had letterhead. We had files. We had confidentiality policies. We had c

This Monday morning, I caught my reflection as I walked into the office and had a small, almost unfamiliar thought: there you are. It was not one of those shallow moments where somebody compliments you and suddenly you feel better about yourself. It was quieter than that. My hair was done, I had on a dress I genuinely liked, and for the first time in a long time, I felt put together in a way that made me recognize myself again. Sometimes, after a hard season, looking in the

More Than a Statute Over the last several months, I have had the unusual experience of sitting on the other side of the desk while my own lawyer handled a crisis in my life. Because I am a lawyer too, I understood what I was watching in a way that many clients may not. I could see the emergency filings, the calls that had to be returned quickly, the conversations that required careful wording, the court appearances, the research, and the constant effort to anticipate what the

More Than a Statute My first memory of a law office is not a courtroom, a hearing, or some dramatic legal moment from television. I was probably about five years old, and my dad’s office was in an old two-story white house on Main Street in Farmerville, where AutoZone now sits. It was his first office of his own in Farmerville, although he had practiced in other places before then. To me, it was simply Daddy’s office. I remember the reception area, the phones, the old house,

I was afraid you would think I was weak. I have never made a life out of looking perfectly calm, perfectly agreeable, perfectly polished, or perfectly easy to explain. I have opinions. I feel things deeply. I can be loud when something matters to me. I can be emotional, stubborn, funny, intense, and entirely too honest when I am tired of pretending something makes sense when it does not. I know that about myself. I have always known that about myself. If somebody decides that

People assume lawyers are trained to read statutes, contracts, court opinions, deadlines, and fine print. And we are. We learn how to spot an issue, find the rule, apply the facts, organize a file, prepare a document, meet a deadline, and stay professionally composed when somebody says something that makes no earthly sense. But some of the most important reading I do has nothing to do with a page in front of me. It is reading the person sitting across from me. It is knowing w

There are skills you can put on a résumé. You can list your education. Your job title. Your years of experience. The things you have built, managed, learned, and accomplished. You can point to the degree on the wall, the business card in your purse, the office you worked hard to build, and the work that has shaped so much of your life. But some of the skills that matter most do not fit neatly into a job description. Nobody teaches you how to turn a horrible night into a damn

More Than a Statute: A Dedication to Penny Hart There are some people who become part of your life in a way you do not fully recognize at first. At the beginning, they may simply be the person you go to for a service. The person behind the chair, behind the desk, behind the counter, behind the title. You make the appointment, you show up, you talk a little, and you leave. Then, somewhere along the way, the relationship becomes something more than the appointment. It becomes t

The quiet courage of standing beside someone when the room is watching I have learned there is a difference between private support and public presence. Both matter. The private text matters. The phone call matters. The quiet prayer matters. The person who checks on you when nobody else knows about it matters. I will never minimize that kind of support, because sometimes those private moments are what help a person keep going. But there is something different about the person

What Clients Need to Know Before Their First Court Date Written By: Judith L. Hampton Hampton Law Firm I am trying to become the kind of lawyer I needed. Not perfect. Not untouchable. Not the kind of person who pretends life is simple because pretending is easier than admitting how heavy it can get. I mean the kind of lawyer who remembers that by the time someone walks into court, they may have already survived the longest night of their life. They may have cried in the car

Why Good People Still Need Criminal Defense Written By: Judith L. Hampton, Attorney At Law Hampton Law Firm I have learned not to throw stones because life has taught me how quickly people can become certain about things they do not actually know. A story can travel faster than the truth. An accusation can become a label. A bad moment can become someone’s entire identity. A public version can harden in people’s minds before the evidence is ever reviewed. People who were no

How To Choose The Right Lawyer For You. Written By: Judith L. Hampton, Attorney At Law Hampton Law Firm Behind every law firm name is a person. Behind every client file is a person too. I understand that differently now than I did when I first started practicing law. There are things life teaches you that no classroom can. There are things that only become clear after you have had to keep functioning while carrying private pain. After you have learned that not every betrayal

What To Bring To Your First Lawyer Consultation Written By: Judith L. Hampton, Attorney At Law Hampton Law Firm I think people misunderstand confidence. Or maybe, more accurately, they misunderstand perceived confidence. They see someone walk into a room prepared, speak clearly, answer questions, and hold herself together, and they assume that person must feel as steady on the inside as she looks on the outside. This reminds me of the annoying saying "the grass isn't always g

Why Preparation Matters Before You Go To Court Written By: Judith L. Hampton Hampton Law Firm, LLC Some things are built in private long before anyone sees them in public. A law firm is built that way. A reputation is built that way. A life is rebuilt that way. A case is built that way too. People love to make assumptions about what someone was handed. They see a name on a building, a sign by the road, a professional title, a steady voice, a lawyer walking into court, and