Greensboro Attorney Abigail Seymour Pens Essay Published in “Boat Burning for Beginners”
Abigail C. Seymour
Creative, courageous and committed to supporting her clients, Abigail C. Seymour founded Greensboro’s Camino Law six years ago. Seymour decided to attend law school after her ten-year career as an editorial and wedding photographer wound down. Then, in the years preceding her first position as an attorney, Seymour faced a critical health issue, and in that same span of time, studied 600 hours to pass the bar exam.
You can read about these turning-point moments and more in Seymour’s beautiful essay, titled “The Other Side of Comfort.” The essay, published in “Boat Burning for Beginners,” is the final one out of nine in the book, a compilation of first-person stories told by women entrepreneurs. The goal of the book is to encourage and inspire others to accomplish their professional goals. Seymour’s piece recounts how she traversed metaphorical mountains and valleys in life before discovering the law as her professional passion and reaching new heights in her career.
Seymour’s writing has been featured in three books thus far. The first essay, which describes what it was like to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain, appeared in “A Woman’s Path: Women’s Best Spiritual Travel Writing,” alongside essays by Anne Lamott and Maya Angelou. The second appeared in “Law Moms,” a collection of stories about individuals who navigate the demands of a role in the legal field and the role of a parent. In “Law Moms,” Seymour recounts the story of adopting her son from Guatemala.
When Seymour opened her practice in 2019, she christened her firm in homage to the Camino de Santiago. This route, hailed as a pilgrimage for travelers, is one that Seymour walked in its completion while visiting the country in 1995, when she was 28 years old. While her essay in “Boat Burning for Beginners” does not recount her experience on this trail, the essay describes the figurative paths she traversed in her professional trajectory, byways that led to her current locale.
Like the 500-mile walkway, Seymour’s route to becoming an attorney wasn’t devoid of difficulty. She decided to go to law school at forty-seven years old. Before this decision, she endured personal loss, and after taking the bar exam, she received a scary diagnosis and received treatment. During these years, she juggled the responsibilities of going to law school and parenting her two children.
If her experience on the Camino is a beacon that guides her to this day, it also reflects the endurance within her that helped her to overcome obstacles and to thrive in life and in the law.
Without giving too much of Seymour’s story away, I invite you to step with me into her shoes by hearing her thoughts on her professional and personal journey and on what it meant to write about it as part of this book project.
In Greensboro, Seymour practices family law with a team of three other attorneys in an office beautified not only by its name, but also by her artistic nature. Traces of the shell, the symbol present on the Camino trail, are woven into the firm’s logo and throughout the office. Hints of yellow, ranging from bright cadmium to saffron, are visible in the decor. Like the shell, the yellow is a nod to the Camino: in Spain, the signs that point travelers in the direction they should take are painted with this hue.
Seymour pictured on the Camino trail.
The firm also has a children’s room and a Little Free Library in front.
“Because my law firm and my journey to becoming a lawyer are just the loves of my life, building the business and basing it on the vision and the values that we have has just been a real joy for me,” said Seymour. “To be able to write about what that was like was very affirming. It affirmed for me that sometimes that’s just one’s nature.”
“I know lots of entrepreneur friends feel the same way, but also just the idea of striking out and just really going for broke, this is sort of where I need to put all my energy. It’s been fun to be able to share that in the book because I just don’t talk about it that much.”
How did Seymour move from the arts, which she studied in college, to becoming an attorney and founding her firm?
Her professional journey began in her 20s, when she moved to Spain to teach English. Equipped with a love for travel and a desire to learn about other cultures, she was not afraid to move to a country she’d not yet visited. She and her boyfriend at the time decided to go to Spain because her boyfriend, who was from Colombia, knew the language.
Seymour began teaching English in Spain, and in her time there, she became proficient in Spanish, which she continues to use today with her Spanish-speaking clients. While in Spain, she also reconnected with her love for the arts, and even more specifically, began to explore how she could make a living through one of her passions—photography.
“While I was there, I built a darkroom in my apartment and started printing and photographing again. I found that love for photography again, because that was what my bachelor’s degree is in. Then, when I got back to the United States, I took a job in a publishing company and started my freelance career and my first business,” she said.
After returning from Spain and working in a 9-to-5 role, she created her solo photography business and embarked on her career as a wedding photographer. She completed more than 300 weddings over a decade. Her business continued to flourish until 2008. That year, during the widespread financial crisis in the United States, many people canceled plans for extravagant weddings. As she describes in the book, her source of income “dried up overnight.”
Artwork in the Camino Law office displays the shell, which is a symbol found on signs that mark paths for travelers on the Camino Trail.
In her essay, Seymour takes you with her on her journey, vividly portraying this moment when her route came to a professional crossroads.
Her immediate step was to foray once again into the 9-to-5 world, where, after three days of working as an assistant to a therapist, she realized she had to figure out the next move in her career. She needed a new profession, and she knew her decision would shape the trajectory of her life.
“Whatever I took on as my next venture had to be sustainable. It had to be something I could do until I was an old woman, something that valued wisdom, maturity, experience, and was never boring,” writes Seymour in her essay.
Opening up further about her interest in the law during our conversation, Seymour said she had considered becoming an attorney long before that moment, but she was not sure if it was the right profession for her given her artistic mindset.
She chose law school for a few reasons. Because four members of her family were attorneys, she had the opportunity to learn about the impact of a career in the law at a young age.
“My grandfather was very distinguished. He was, I guess, what we call a white shoe Wall Street lawyer, but he was also a civil rights lawyer. And he argued a very important case in front of the Supreme Court. My brother was president of the New York City Bar, and my sister-in-law was the lead prosecutor in the Martha Stewart case,” she said.
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“It was always clear in my family that the mission of a lawyer was that of public service. That did inspire me. But being the youngest of the five kids and being very creative, I really just didn’t think I had it. I didn’t think I was smart enough to do it, which is why I put it off for so long,” Seymour shared in our conversation.
Just as Elon University School of Law was launched in Greensboro, she and her husband adopted their son from Guatemala. In her own words, this is the moment when she decided to become an attorney: she wanted to go into immigration law because of her desire to help families. She anticipated the good she would do through becoming an attorney.
“I wanted to feel like I was pointing myself towards something with great purpose that could benefit my son later,” she said.
“I feel a little funny if people say, ‘Wow, that must have been so hard.’ No, what would have been harder would be if I hadn’t done it. I have two quotations on my wall. One is, ‘It’s never too late to be who you might have been.’ And the other one is, ‘Of all the words of tongue and pen, these three are saddest: might have been.’”
She entered Elon University School of Law in 2014. She says that law school was a respite because it was completely different from anything she had ever done and every aspect of her life at the time.
“I wanted to attack something that was even more difficult and sort of outside home in order to balance some of the challenges,” she said.
Seymour was sworn in to Federal Court in Greensboro on May 23, 2019.
Now, she sees her creativity as one of her greatest strengths. She says that many highly creative and thoughtful people might doubt, as she initially did, that they could thrive in the practice of law. But as an attorney, she finds that there are a variety of hats that she wears, and because of that, individuals with different personalities and strengths make excellent attorneys.
“I think my creativity is really helpful, partly because it makes me very empathetic, and I can see things from many different angles. That was very freeing for me, to realize I did not have to squelch that side of myself in order to become an attorney,” said Seymour.
“People are attracted to different things for different reasons. But there’s an element of theater in what we do. There’s an element of writing. There are elements of visual arts. It’s very social, parts of it, so it can be that you’d be an extremely well-rounded, creative person and still practice law.”
In transitioning fields from photography to the law, her unwavering courage carried her every step of the way—including through a health issue that she experienced after finishing law school, which she discusses more in the essay. Overcoming that difficult time is what she did, and it gave her the wings to launch her own firm.
After passing the bar exam, she knew she wanted to open her own practice and that she wanted it to be a place where she could connect with clients in a personal way. But she wasn’t sure where to begin. At this time, one person was especially helpful: NCBA Center of Practice Management Director Catherine Sanders Reach.
“I will never forget, I’ve told Catherine this, but I’m sure everybody’s told her this. She was the first person I called when I was interested in starting a firm, and she gave me an hour of her time. She gave me so many great pointers and also just gave me the courage to start and to be like, yeah, you’re not crazy,” said Seymour.
After the conversation, Seymour continued to define her vision and opened the family law firm about a year after she was a licensed attorney. She also joined the NCBA Small Firm & Technology Section.
Camino Law, 2025. Front row, from left to right: Reko Currie, Kate Mendez, Janet Gil and Priscilla Torres. Back row, left to right: Cynthia Castillo, Arlet Higinio-Rodriguez, Abigail C. Seymour and Shannon Hennis.
In her essay, Seymour explains how valuable it was to lean on her community during this time.
“In both the business-building and lawyer-building communities, I never encountered anything but generosity. Attorneys would take my calls, answer my questions, and send me samples of pleadings I needed to use as my templates. I joined online groups of solo practitioners and people wanting to ‘hang a shingle.’ And one by one, I represented clients. I learned their stories, their fears, their pain points and extended my genuine interest in them and in solving their problems.”
In beginning her own business, she felt she was well-positioned to support her clients with great compassion and care, in part because of the support around her, and also because she entered the legal profession after having surmounted difficulties and challenging moments.
“But I do think it’s helped me, particularly around parenting agreements and working on that. I had a child with special needs when he was younger. So there were just different things that those experiences bring to it. But I don’t think that’s actually unique.
“I think that probably most people who get to middle age have been through all kinds of different things,” she said. “I do think that having some of those family bumps have made it so that I can find our clients, or our clients can find us just because there might be some sort of telepathy about our compassion and our understanding with what they’re going through.”
She feels equipped to support her clients because of her life experiences, and also because of her creativity, a core value. Her artistic bent was something that had made her initially question whether the legal field would be a good fit for her, but she came to view it as a powerful strength.
The children’s room at the Camino Law office.
“What was very freeing for me was to realize I did not have to squelch that side of myself in order to become an attorney. And I think that I had the illusion that I would have to become much more buttoned up, much more corporate in my presentation and in my thinking,” she said.
As her firm and practice have thrived, she has supported the legal community through her service. Beyond her NCBA membership, she is a member of the Greensboro Bar Association, where she served on the Community Involvement Committee in 2024-2025. She also serves on the board for the Children’s Law Center of Central North Carolina.
She finds her work as an attorney deeply rewarding, especially because she is personally connected to her clients.
“I have built wonderful relationships. So to be able to see clients and their families progress in the same way I have stayed in touch with my wedding clients over the years, is such a gift.
“I’ve just enjoyed really being able to catch up with clients a few years later, and they ‘ll say, ‘Things are so much better,’ or “I got married again!,’ or some sort of rebirth in their lives is deeply gratifying. I know firsthand that when you’re in a transition that you didn’t want or that you didn’t expect, it’s very hard to see that you may have unexpectedly wonderful new chapters in your life.”
Seymour is especially grateful for the opportunity to have published her story in written form.
“Sulit Press, who published both ‘Boat Burning’ and ‘Law Moms,’ is creating a community of women writers. It’s a great opportunity for business owners and people of all different walks of life who want to try their hand at it. They did a lot of coaching for us and walking us through our stories and helping us tell them,” she said.
Abigail Seymour has an amazing story. It is one you’ll have to read for yourself by picking up a copy of “Boat Burning for Beginners.”
Jessica Junqueira is communications manager for the North Carolina Bar Association.