From Judith’s Desk - August 9, 2026
- Hampton Law Firm ⚖️
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
A collection of thoughts that didn’t make it to the blog.
I am not entirely sure how all of this happened in the same week.
Last Sunday, I was driving home from Great Wolf Lodge after making the extremely rational decision to recover from a week of working until 9:00, 10:00 and 11:00 at night by loading three children into my vehicle and taking them to a water park by myself.
Obviously.
I had been scared to go. I had never done anything quite like that alone with all three of them, I was already exhausted, and there was absolutely no reason to believe that adding swimsuits, life jackets, arcade games, wet children and a hotel room to the situation was going to qualify as “rest.”
It did.
Not physical rest, necessarily. Let us not get carried away.
But something in me rested.
It was wonderful. Truly wonderful.
I swam with my babies. I watched them laugh. I watched them be completely ridiculous. I got in the water instead of sitting beside it answering emails. I wasn't watching the clock because somebody was waiting on me. I wasn't thinking about what was sitting on my desk. For a couple of days, nobody needed me to be Attorney Hampton.
They just needed Mama.
And my mama heart needed that more than I realized.
Then I came home.
Apparently Hampton Law Firm had also had a relaxing weekend and was fully prepared to ruin mine.
Between Monday and Wednesday, 27 new matters came into this office.
Twenty-seven.
Not website clicks. Not Facebook likes. Not “engagement.” Twenty-seven actual people with actual problems who picked up the phone, filled out a form, scheduled an appointment or walked through our door and trusted this office with something that mattered to them.
Then more came.
More came today.
More are coming tomorrow.
And people are coming from outside of Farmerville—some specifically asking for this office, and specifically asking for me.
That part has hit me harder than the number.
Because I keep hearing why.
They found something on our website that helped them. They read one of the articles. They liked the resources. They liked that we explained something without requiring a law degree and a decoder ring. They saw something we posted and thought, That is where I want to go.
And some of them have said something else.
They like me.
Which is frankly a little alarming, because lately I have been showing people considerably more Judith than Attorney Hampton.
Apparently that was not the catastrophic marketing decision I once assumed it would be.
People respond to the explanations. They respond to the humor. They respond when I admit I don't know something. They respond when I tell them what I actually think. They respond to the fact that sometimes you are going to get polished lawyer Judith and sometimes you are going to get Judith-who-has-been-at-the-office-for-twelve-hours-and-has-lost-interest-in-pretending-anything-is-normal.
Raw Judith does occasionally need to be returned to her enclosure.
We know.
We are working on it.
But this week gave me some confirmation I badly needed.
This is working.
Not everything. God knows not everything.
My relationship with the concept of office hours remains largely theoretical.
My ability to say “that can wait until tomorrow” is still under investigation.
And 27 new matters in three days is not exactly evidence that I have mastered the art of creating a peaceful life.
But what I have been trying to build here is working.
People see the difference.
They feel the difference.
They trust it.
And I am proud of that in a way I don't know that I have allowed myself to be before.
There has been a very real personal cost to the way I have worked. I know that. I have worked too much. I have given this profession hours it had absolutely no business taking. I have sat in this office at night when I should have been somewhere else, and I am not interested in romanticizing that simply because some good things have come from it.
There are parts of my personal life right now that hurt.
There are things I wish were different.
But I also refuse to take every painful thing that has happened and use it as proof that the work I have poured myself into was meaningless.
It wasn't.
This week made that very clear.
What is happening here matters.
The person who walks into my office terrified about losing property matters.
The family that has no idea what they are supposed to do after somebody dies matters.
The person who has been Googling the same legal question for three nights and still doesn't understand the answer matters.
The person who drives past other law offices to come here because something about this one made them feel like they would be heard matters.
That is what the 27 meant to me.
Not “look how busy I am.”
Trust me, nobody needs additional evidence that I am busy.
It meant: people are finding what I have been trying so hard to build.
And somewhere between Great Wolf Lodge on Sunday and case number 27 on Wednesday, something clicked.
I don't actually want to choose between these parts of my life.
I don't want success at Hampton Law Firm if the price is missing my children's childhood.
But I also don't want to spend the rest of my life apologizing for caring deeply about work that I know has value.
I want to take my children to Great Wolf Lodge and get in the damn pool.
I also want to walk into an office Monday morning that I built from the ground up and know that people are driving here because they believe we can help them.
I want both.
Apparently the real assignment is figuring out how to have both without eventually being discovered facedown on my desk underneath an abstract and three unsigned affidavits.
That part remains under development.
And someday, when there is someone standing beside me in the life I am building, I don't want him merely tolerating the fact that I care about this work.
I want someone who understands why I care.
Someone who is proud when the office has a week like this.
Someone who can listen to me excitedly explain something we are building even if he has absolutely no idea why I have spent 45 minutes obsessing over the wording of one button on a website.
Someone who cheers when it works.
And someone who also looks at me at 7:30 at night and says, “Judith. Enough. Go home.”
Preferably someone I occasionally listen to.
No promises.
I don't know exactly what the next version of my life looks like yet.
I do know this:
Last weekend reminded me that there is a whole part of me that comes alive when I am simply Mama.
This week reminded me that there is another part of me that comes alive when I walk into Hampton Law Firm and realize that something I once imagined is becoming something people can actually see, use and trust.
Neither one needs to disappear for the other one to exist.
I just have to get considerably better at letting them share custody of Judith.
And, based on my current track record, probably establish a written visitation schedule.
It was a hell of a week.
But it was a good one.
My mama heart got something it needed.
My lawyer heart did too.
And for tonight, I think I am just going to let myself be proud of both.
JLH
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