FROM JUDITH’S DESK - AUGUST 20, 2026 - OPINIONS OR POSITIONS?

A collection of thoughts that didn’t make it to the blog.

I have discovered that I do not really have “preferences.” I have positions. There is a difference. A preference is, “I like a middle part.” A position is, “I have now seen enough photographic evidence to know that the side part is no longer entitled to due process.” A preference is wanting a large work bag. A position is becoming personally offended when some manufacturer calls a seventeen-inch purse “extra large” as though I am supposed to fit a laptop, legal files, makeup, chargers, half my office and the accumulated debris of three children into something designed to hold a wallet and one emotionally supportive lipstick. I am 5’10”. I do not need a dainty little tote. I need luggage with handles.

The same problem follows me everywhere. I do not want a law-firm website that looks like a funeral home had sex with a bank. I do not want a legal video where everybody is standing there smiling like we just discovered estate planning at a church picnic. If Nan and I are on camera, Nan is funny. That is her job. Mine is to explain why Louisiana law uses phrases like “naked ownership” and “usufruct” and somehow maintain enough professional dignity that nobody reports us to the Bar. JB is six years old and already knows enough Louisiana property vocabulary to make CPS wonder what kind of bedtime stories we are reading over here.

I am aware that none of these things deserves the level of conviction I bring to them. I have tried being more relaxed. It appears not to have taken. I paid somebody to put filler in my face because I decided my cheeks needed improvement, spent an absurd amount of time hunting for a work bag large enough to qualify as commercial freight, and will reject an otherwise perfectly good photograph because my hair is doing something I did not authorize. Meanwhile, I can walk into court and discuss somebody’s liberty with considerably less drama than I bring to choosing a shade of maroon. I don’t know what that says about me, but at thirty-eight I have accepted that I am not going to become one of those serene women who says, “Either one is fine.” Either one is very rarely fine. One is right. The other one is why I am still talking.

JLH

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