Monday With a Side of Murder

Hampton Law Firm ⚖️
Jun 29
6 min read

Updated: Jul 12

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 mirror and seeing a version of yourself that feels familiar is not vanity. Sometimes it is simply relief.

A few clients noticed, too. They said kind things, and I appreciated them. But what mattered most was that their comments matched something I had already felt before anyone walked through the door: I was present. I was steady. I did not feel like a machine dragging itself from one obligation to the next with a calendar in one hand and a phone in the other.

My first appointment was with a longtime client who is also a longtime friend, which meant there was no need for formal small talk before we got to work. He gave me the abbreviated version of three things. First, he wanted the latest chapter of whatever had been going on in my life because, in his words, I always seem to have a story. Second, he had a legal problem and did not know what to do about it. Third, he reminded me that when the critics get loud, he would always stand behind me. It meant more than I think he knew.

That is one of the things I enjoy most about long relationships with clients. There is room to be human for a minute, laugh a little, and catch up on life. But there is also trust. He was there because he needed someone to help him think through a civil litigation matter, identify the information we needed, consider the procedural tools available to us, and make decisions before someone else made them for him.

So we got to work.

My second appointment involved a contested succession administration. That meant a different set of problems, but the same basic responsibility: helping a family protect what matters while they are grieving, frustrated, worried about debts, and trying not to do permanent damage to relationships that may already be strained. We talked about property, obligations, procedure, and the practical choices that can either make a difficult situation more manageable or make it much worse.

After that, I returned to the ordinary part of running a law office: emails, phone calls, client updates, employee questions, technology problems, files that need reviewing, and a phone system that appears to have developed opinions of its own. Then I saw the envelope from the District Attorney’s office.

Inside was a flash drive containing discovery in a homicide case I am defending.

That is a sharp turn in the middle of an otherwise ordinary Monday.

I plugged it in, opened the video, and immediately found myself in the kind of work that changes the temperature in the room. For half a second, the most unserious part of my brain thought, I am extremely overdressed for this. Then the lawyer part of my brain took over, because none of the other parts of my day mattered in that moment. The file needed my full attention.

When people hear that someone is reviewing evidence in a homicide case, they often imagine a dramatic emotional response. That is not usually what happens to me. It is not because I do not understand the seriousness of what I am watching. It is because my mind immediately begins working through the details.

I replay conversations with my client. I compare what I see on a screen with what my client told me they saw, heard, understood, feared, believed, or did not know at the time. I try to understand what was happening from my client’s perspective—not because I am trying to excuse anything, and not because the seriousness of a case disappears when someone is charged, but because I cannot begin to defend a person if I do not make a real effort to understand them.

I cannot do my job by sitting outside a client’s life and looking only at the version of events that is easiest to accept. I have to ask what they were thinking, what they knew, what they did not know, what they believed was happening, and what details may have shaped a decision that later gets reduced to a few seconds of footage or a few lines in a report. I have to look for the missing context. I have to think about the timeline, the assumptions being made, the questions that have not been asked, and the difference between what a video appears to show in a few seconds and what may actually have been happening inside a person’s mind in that moment.

That is what serious defense work requires. It does not mean pretending tragedy is not tragic.

It does not mean minimizing the pain of anyone involved. It means recognizing that the more serious an allegation is, the more carefully everyone involved should be paying attention. A person’s life should not be reduced to a clip of footage, a few lines in a report, or the easiest explanation of what happened.

The civil litigation appointment, the succession meeting, the client calls, the staff questions, the closing files, and the homicide discovery may look completely unrelated from the outside. To me, they are all connected by the same responsibility: slow down, understand the facts, ask better questions, and help people make decisions that carry real consequences.

But that homicide file was only part of the day.

There were still more appointments ahead of me. There were still emails to answer, calls to return, staff questions waiting, and the ordinary pile of things that keep an office running even when the work itself gets heavy. And eventually, there were three children waiting for Mommy to come pick them up.

That is the strange rhythm of my life sometimes. One part of the day, I am reviewing evidence in a case that could shape the rest of someone’s life. Another part of the day, I am thinking about who needs to be picked up, what everybody is going to eat for dinner, whether someone has a bag packed, and how quickly I can make it from one responsibility to the next without forgetting something important in the car. Now that I’ve written that, it reminds me that I need to run to my car real quick...

I do not believe I have to turn off the parts of myself that enjoy being feminine, getting dressed up, or feeling good in my own skin in order to do difficult work well. I do not need to become colder, harder, or less recognizable to be credible in a serious room. A dress does not change whether I understand procedure. A good hair day does not take away from the fact that I can evaluate discovery, map out a strategy, protect a family’s property, or sit with a difficult file until I understand what needs to happen next.

By the end of the day, I was still behind on emails. The calendar was still mildly hostile. There were still calls to return, staff questions waiting, files stacked on my desk, and at least one moment where I walked into a room and forgot why I was there.

But I took part of my lunch break to write about the contrast because it made me laugh. One hour, I was sitting in a dress I liked while a longtime friend told me to catch him up on my life before asking me to help him solve a legal problem. A few hours later, I was reviewing homicide discovery and trying to understand every angle of a case that could shape the rest of someone’s life. Then there were more appointments, more work, and three little people waiting for me to come get them.

That is a lot for one Monday.

But it is also a reminder that I do not have to choose between being a woman who likes feeling like herself, a mother with people depending on her, and a lawyer who can handle hard things. All of those things are true at once. This is your reminder that you also have multiple true facts about you, everyone does. Make sure you focus on the positive ones.

And on the days when I catch my reflection and recognize the person looking back at me, I am learning to let that be enough, you are too.

Judith L. Hampton

Attorney-at-Law

Hampton Law Firm

Judith L. Hampton

Attorney -at-Law

Hampton Law Firm