Every firm has an origin story. This year, the Hennepin Lawyer will be featuring profiles from HCBA member-firms, sharing how they got started, how they've evolved, and what’s on the horizon. Up first is Bloomgren Hanson Legal, PLLC.
Bloomgren Hanson Legal, PLLC is a small law practice in the City of Hopkins managed by Amanda Bloomgren and Katie Hanson.
The firm’s two partners left their former jobs to open Bloomgren Hanson Legal, PLLC in 2011. Bloomgren was working in a small firm in the Southwest suburbs and Hanson was a law clerk to Hennepin County Judge William Koch. Bloomgren Hanson Legal initially provided a wide variety of general legal services, but over the last decade, they have each narrowed their practices to focus on the work they most enjoy. Hanson primarily provides estate planning and probate services and Bloomgren provides family law services, including acting as an ADR neutral. Bloomgren Hanson started with no support staff and remains lean today, with a part-time paralegal who also carries her J.D. and whom both partners state they would be lost without.
Both Bloomgren and Hanson graduated from the University of St. Thomas School of Law in 2006. Their firm was established during a trip Bloomgren and Hanson took to visit law school friends in Washington D.C. When asked about founding the firm, Bloomgren shared, “We naively thought that our time navigating law school as close friends would set us up for joint success. In hindsight, tag-teaming caring for Katie’s 6-month-old baby on our D.C. trip was likely the more transferable experience. I’m not sure if that says more about babies or more about running a law firm. I do know that it says a lot about our commitment to each other as colleagues and friends in building a true partnership.”
As the practice has evolved, both Bloomgren and Hanson discovered they find the most satisfaction in serving clients who initially retain the firm while in crisis, and are then assisted from a place of crisis to a reasonable solution. Due to the nature of their practices, their clients are often hiring a lawyer for the first time. Hanson indicates, “It is important to remain focused on knowing that the work we do is likely related to one of the biggest or the biggest thing happening in our client’s life at that moment. We may be dealing with a routine or easy situation for us as counsel, but it is an important, sometimes confusing, and usually new process for our client. We take that responsibility seriously and know that walking our clients through the process step by step is critical and makes clients confident they not only made the right choice in counsel but are making the best choice in how to proceed with their matter.”
Founding Bloomgren Hanson Legal has allowed each of the attorneys to enjoy the autonomy and flexibility of a small practice. Dogs and kids are welcome in the workplace, and both operate on unique day-to-day schedules that allow them to be home to field kids off the bus and coach sports teams. Hanson is active within her daughters’ school community at Notre Dame Academy in Minnetonka and Bloomgren is active on various community boards. In addition, they have both served as adjunct professors at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.
“If you are in downtown Hopkins, wave when you walk by our sunny storefront office on Mainstreet,” Hanson says. “It honors our Tommie roots with a purple and grey color scheme and one open concept office that is reminiscent of our years sharing a much smaller and less-appealing UST Law library study room.”
