Meet Bethany

Bethany M. Long-Hampsten

Bethany Long-Hampsten has seen criminal and traffic cases in southwest Virginia from every side — first as a judicial law clerk, then as a prosecutor for seven years across two Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Offices, and now as a defense attorney at Joyner Law. She handles the firm’s full caseload through its southwest Virginia footprint: speeding tickets, reckless driving, DUI, drug offenses, and serious felony cases through murder.

Bethany earned her Bachelor of Arts in History and Religion summa cum laude from Salem College in North Carolina, with a minor in Political Science. She went on to Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, where she graduated 12th in her class and received the Trial Advocacy Award from the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association. During law school she served as 3L Chief Justice of the Honor Court, was a member of the Mock Trial Team, and served as an Associate Editor of the Appalachian Journal of Law. She was admitted to practice in Virginia in 2012.

Her first job out of law school was as a Judicial Law Clerk for the Tazewell County Circuit Court. From there she joined the Tazewell County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, where she spent three years as Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney — prosecuting felony and misdemeanor cases in Circuit, General District, and Juvenile and Domestic Relations Courts, and serving as lead prosecutor on juvenile delinquency cases. She moved to the Carroll County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office in 2016, where she spent four more years as Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney before crossing over to defense in 2020. In total, she spent seven years as a prosecutor before joining Joyner Law.

Bethany handles cases out of the firm’s Wytheville office. She’s the attorney who knows the courts, the judges, the prosecutors, and the other defense attorneys in southwest Virginia through years of being in those rooms, week after week. It’s a tight-knit legal community, and she’s spent more than a decade in it. She also serves as Chair of the Virginia State Bar’s Tenth District disciplinary committee for southwest Virginia.

Bethany’s approach with clients is built on the same thing her work in court is: an accurate read of the case. She’ll tell a client what’s going on, what’s likely, and what they’re actually deciding between — including the parts that are hard to hear — without losing sight of the fact that they’re going through something stressful. Steady, not anxious, not theatrical, not selling a version of the case that isn’t there. The assessment is the work, and the advocacy that follows it is built on it.