Judith Fournie Helms
Judith grew up in southern Illinois and attended a Catholic all-girl high school before moving to Chicago for college and law school. She put herself through school working at a 100-year-old hardware store in downtown Chicago.
When she started practicing law in 1978, there were very few women in the courtrooms. She met her husband Larry when he showed up in one of those courtrooms as opposing counsel. In the law firm where she worked, she was the first lawyer to deliver a baby, and a maternity policy was born. Ten years later, her second daughter arrived, and a maternity policy for adoptive moms was conceived. Issues related to infertility and IVF treatments are explored in her first novel, The Toronto Embryo.
She became a founding partner of a law firm based in Chicago with offices on both coasts, and has been recognized by her peers as a “Super Lawyer,” and a “Leading Lawyer.” A case she defended was the inspiration for her second novel, Grudge Tiger.
Judith and Larry both retired from the practice of law, and now live and write fiction at their home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Their two canine family members Benny and Chica-the-Brave, insist they are now mountain dogs.