The Capital Area Bar Association (CABA) honored Judge Linda Thompson Robertson of Jackson with the 2025 Community Service Award.
The award was presented during CABA’s An Evening Honoring the Judiciary at the Country Club of Jackson.
Other award recipients included Ben J. Piazza Jr., CABA Outstanding Member Award; R. Barry Cannada, CABA Professionalism Award; Madeline Iles, Jackson Young Lawyers Association Outstanding Service Award; and Jason Tullos, JYL Pro Bono Award.
Margaret Oertling Cupples, past president of CABA, nominated Judge Thompson for the Community Service Award. She said, “I am delighted to present this award to her; she is a longtime friend and has been an amazing community servant, mentor, and leader in the bar during her long and distinguished career.”
Judge Thompson has been active in historic preservation in Jackson for more than 40 years, since researching the Junior League of Jackson’s 1982 publication, Jackson Landmarks. She served on the Oaks House Museum board of directors from 2004 until 2023 and was board chairman for 12 years. She is on the board of the Greenwood Cemetery Association that cares for historic Greenwood Cemetery in downtown Jackson. For 13 years she has worked photographing gravestones, researching those buried without markers, documenting their racial diversity, and developing tour brochures and articles. She also was honored in 2021 as an outstanding community volunteer by Goodwill Industries Volunteer Services.
Judge Thompson has been an administrative law judge at the Mississippi Workers’ Compensation Commission since 1992. She joined the commission in 1988, first serving as senior attorney. She has taught workers’ compensation law as an adjunct professor at Mississippi College School of Law. In 2012, the law school named her State Judge of the Year.
She is co-author of the treatise Mississippi Workers’ Compensation in Thomson Reuters’ Mississippi Practice Series, now in its 19th edition, and of the workers’ compensation chapter in the Encyclopedia of Mississippi Law. In 2023, the Mississippi Bar’s Workers’ Compen-sation Section presented her with the Award for Exceptional Professionalism in the Practice of Workers’ Compensation Law.
Cupples said that in her more than 30 years of judicial experience, Judge Thompson has been an example for the profession. “She is courteous, kind, and has taught generations of law students and lawyers the finer points of workers’ compensation law.” She also noted Judge Thompson is an author of leading treatises on that subject.
Judge Thompson served in bar leadership positions including as president of the Hinds County Bar Association, now the Capital Area Bar Association, as a commissioner of the Mississippi Bar, and as president of the Mississippi Women Lawyers’ Association. She is a Fellow of the Mississippi Bar Foundation and of the College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers.
Cupples said, “She is a fine person who has given much to the practice and to the organizations with which she has been involved, and she is richly deserving of this award.”
Judge Thompson earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art history from Vanderbilt University. She earned her law degree from Mississippi College School of Law.
She is a member of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral and the widow of former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice James L. Robertson.
