For Erin Leigh Waddell Garrett, her career path was always set in her mind. “I always knew I was going to law school, it was just always a plan. I don’t know that I thought I’d be a lawyer, but I did intend on being a judge,” she said. Those youthful plans of judgeship may become a reality, as she is embarking on a campaign to be elected judge in Caddo Parish this year.
Waddell Garrett received a Bachelor of Arts from Louisiana Tech University and then a Juris Doctorate from Southern University Law Center. She then moved to New Orleans where she worked as a law clerk for the Honorable Pascal F. Calogero, Jr., Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court. When she finished her clerkship, she had a choice. “I thought about staying in New Orleans, because I really loved it, but it didn’t make a whole lot of sense if I planned to run for judge. I decided to move back to my hometown and practice law, and so I set up shop here,” she said.
After working for other firms around Shreveport, Waddell Garrett she decided she wanted to work her own hours if she and her husband wanted to have a family, and so opened her own practice. “I do everything under the sun except bankruptcy and real estate. In 2011 I started with all of the mental health for LSUHSC and work with their judicial commitments, people with severe mental disabilities, which helps prevent them from harm to themselves and other, and that takes up a large part of my practice now,” she said. “Things like the movie theater shootings and school shootings - those people usually are all transferred back to having had some sort of mental illness. Not to say that they were insane, but maybe they had severe bipolar disorder or were severely depressed. It’s a good advocate process to be making sure these people are getting help and staying in the hospital and getting the treatments that they need. Now that it’s University Health, I still do Shreveport and Monroe - all of North and Central Louisiana,” she said.
Running for judge has always been a goal for Waddell Garrett. “I feel like my skill set is better suited to be a judge. I’m very practical in application and I’m very logical - though my husband may sing a different tune,” she joked. “For the most part, I feel like our job as attorney is to advocate for your client zealously, regardless of your personal opinion on the subject. That’s your job, that’s what they hire you for. I do that, and I love it. I love the thrill of the trial,” she said. My skill set is better put to use by saying ‘why don’t we just agree on this. How did we get so far apart on this. Why don’t we just talk to these people -what if we do this’,” she explained. “At the end of the day, it’s not about these two people in domestic court, it’s about these kids. Or at the end of the day, it’s not about these two people and the contract that they both kind of knew what they were doing, even though it didn’t work the way you wanted, it’s about finding a practical application to solve this,” she said. “I feel like sometimes that’s missing, and I feel like I can provide that from the bench. Having different life experiences - having waited tables, having bartended, having worked with people one on one for so long, having had a job since I was 14 years old - all of those things help when you’re sitting on the bench to help relate to people and try to find a reasonable, practical solution to their issue.”
In her spare time, she spends time with her husband Greg, and their 19 month-old daughter Auden, and they are also excitedly expecting a new addition to their family this July. Waddell Garrett is also a past President of the Shreveport Bar Association - Young Lawyers Section, is a member of the Junior League of Shreveport- Bossier, and a dedicated member of the Krewe of Justinian. “I love what I do, and I’m really excited for the future,” she said.
