Today we’d like to introduce you to Abigail Seymour.
Hi Abigail, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I feel like I have “started” several different times in my life, and I think it’s good for women to give themself permission to do that. I got married (for the first time) in my 20s, which I thought was the beginning of my “real” life, and then when that didn’t work out a few years later, I began again by moving to Spain to “start over.” I lived there for three years, still not sure of my path, and continued to try and find it — I walked a pilgrimage route while I was there and hoped that would be my beginning. What I couldn’t see then was how each of these starts and stops and resets were my path, that each one carved out a new groove in who I was. I left Spain after 3 years and took a job in North Carolina as a writer and editor, fully planning for that to be just a temporary stop. That was in 1997, and North Carolina has been my home ever since.
I remarried, started a business, adopted a child, gave birth to another child, and still felt like had not really found “it,” — so I dusted off a dream I had years before to become an attorney like my grandfather, uncle, cousin, and brother before me. I never truly felt hampered by the fact that I was over 40 at that point. I applied to and was accepted at Elon University School of Law in Greensboro, and everything about it felt right. It was the first time in all of my endeavors that I felt “aligned” with who I was meant to be.
I graduated in 2017 when I turned 50 years old. I had to take the bar exam more than once, and this almost stopped me from continuing on, but I persevered and passed the bar exam in 2019. I started my law firm, Camino Law, with a vision of an inclusive, non-traditional space that focused on children and families. The firm is named after the pilgrimage route I walked in Spain, El Camino de Santiago, to remind myself that no step we take is ever in the wrong direction because even a wrong turn can take us to the right place.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I struggled with substance and alcohol use and got sober in Spain. I was grieving the fact that my first marriage had failed (or I had just given up on it, which felt worse), and I waited until I was 39 to become a mom, so I felt a little out of step then, too.
During my first year of law school, my sister Mary, to whom I was very close and who lived a few minutes away, died by suicide. It was devastating, and our whole family has had to come to terms with her pain. I almost dropped out of law school but realized it was the only place that kept my mind off her death. It has been 8 years, and our children’s playroom in the office is called “Mary’s Room” in her honor, so she is always with me.
The first time I failed the bar exam (I took it three times, failed 2x) — I found out the same day that I had breast cancer. Also terrifying, and since it was only 2 years after my sister died, I have always wondered if it wasn’t from the stress of losing her. I will never know, but I had surgery and am now cancer-free. I will never forget waiting for the doctor to come talk to me, and when he walked in carrying a tote bag with a big pink ribbon on it, I knew. It was awful.
But now my kids are in high school, their dad and I are divorced but good friends, and I am able to bring all of those experiences in with me. Our clients (we do family law) are often in the worst moments of their lives, but instead of feeling like “Wow, that must be awful for you,” I can genuinely say, “I have been where you are.”
We’ve been impressed with Camino Law, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
We are a family law firm that helps people dissolve or change their family structure in a way that is least painful or damaging to the kids involved.
We have three attorneys and four support staff, all women, and we embrace being a non-traditional firm in the sense of it not needing to give off a corporate vibe just because we are a law firm. I wanted our space and our philosophy to feel like a home, and so while we have all the systems and procedures to run an efficient and effective law practice, those systems and gears are hopefully humming along underneath, and clients just feel comfortable, safe and heard.
We handle all kinds of family law cases — separation and divorce, child custody, property division, etc. and we also handle family-based immigration since so many of our family law clients need help in that area. Most of our staff is bilingual (including me), so the two areas are a natural fit.
The cases that I take are specifically those involving some kind of addiction —I represent clean and sober parents working to get their kids back after years of active addiction, or I will often represent a grandparent or other family member who steps in due to the active addiction or incarceration of someone with small children. We are recovery-friendly in that we understand the disease and want the best outcomes for everyone involved.
Every family that dissolves and re-assembles itself did, at some point, start out with love and hope and belief in each other. We try to help clients remember that, even when there is anger or resentment — you loved that other person once, we remind them, so for your own sanity, try to find a glimmer of that into the process because it will be best for you, too.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc.?
There isn’t a productivity system or app that I haven’t tried, going back to my first Trapper Keeper in 7th grade. I have finally settled on David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” philosophy and use the app ToDoIst to implement it. I do still love paper and pen, though, and have a series of Bullet Journals and fountain pens for writing down ideas. I love Jen Sincero’s book series, “You are a Badass,” and Carol Dweck’s book, “Mindset”. We use Slack in the office for communication, and Guru for our internal processes manual. My favorite channel in our office Slack is #memes-and-tiktoks because with the kind of work we do, we need to remember to keep our senses of humor.
Pricing:
- $950 for a simple no-fault NC divorce
- $5000 – starting retainer for family law cases
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.camino-law.com
- Instagram: @caminolaw
- Facebook: /caminolaw
Image Credits
Jerry Wolford
