Attorney
Nikki Kaasa
Biography
I grew up in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and then attended undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While earning my degrees in Finance and Risk Management from the School of Business, I was a member of the Badger Women’s Hockey Team that brought home two NCAA Championships in 2009 and 2011. After graduating from UW-Madison in 2012, I decided to delay having to get a big kid’s job a little bit longer by going to law school at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, California. I enjoyed just about everything LA had to offer, from a climate that never gets below zero to local restaurants full of different flavors and ethnicities at just about every corner to all the wonderful people I met. You either love or hate LA – I loved it.
Although the original plan was to stay and start my legal career in Los Angeles, I realized how much I missed home during a visit to the motherland over my last spring break. So, after I graduated from law school, I packed up my 2005 Chevy Cavalier that I’d driven since high school and made the pilgrimage home. I moved to Fergus Falls in August 2016, when I took a job at a small law firm. Why Fergus Falls? It was relatively close to where my friends lived so I could see them on weekends. It was also a town that I grew up spending time in, as it is where my father is from, and my grandparents lived here until they passed away. If nothing else, I could be in a familiar place for a few years to start my legal career
One of my conditions of employment was that I agree to coach girls’ hockey in the area. Little did I know that it would be that stipulation that would be the first root laid down to ultimately keep me in Fergus Falls for going on eight years and counting (more on that later). I spent the first five years of my legal career trying my hand at various practice areas, including family law, landlord/tenant law, estate planning, water and drainage law, appellate practice, debtor/creditor law, probate, business law, real property law, bankruptcy, CHIPS, and criminal law. That’s the beauty of practicing law in a small-town law firm – you learn to be a jack of all trades before deciding what to specialize in.
One of the reasons I chose to hang my own shingle was to create an environment more conducive to promoting a healthy work-life balance. What does the “life” part of that equation look like for me? Most of the time, it involves me being in a hockey rink or doing something hockey related. I am an assistant coach for the Fergus Falls Girls’ High School Hockey Program, and it is probably my biggest passion getting to coach young girls in not just hockey, but in life. A good portion of my duties as an attorney involve people managing, and what better way to learn how to do that than to work with 36 teenage girls 6-8 months of the year? I also serve as the Legal Advisor to the Fergus Falls Youth Hockey Association. Outside of hockey, I enjoy playing golf, traveling, and experiencing the highs and (mostly) lows of being a Minnesota Wild fan.
I am admitted to practice in the following jurisdictions:
– State of Minnesota
– U.S. District for the District of Minnesota
Associations:
– Minnesota State Bar Association – Member
– Seventh District Bar Association – Member
Why “29th & Law, PC”?
Since I opened up shop in January 2022, a lot of people ask me “Why did you pick 29th & Law as your firm name?” Fair question, as it sounds nothing like your standard, run-of-the-mill law firm name. That was one of the reasons I picked 29th & Law – because it was different than the plain old [Insert your last name here] Law. I also have an older brother who happens to be an attorney in the State of Minnesota and since he’s the eldest child in our family, I believe that gives him first dibs at using our last name to promote legal services. (In all seriousness, if you are in need of an excellent mediator or family law attorney in the Duluth Area, I highly recommend Benjamin Kaasa Law Office, PLLC).
The number 29 also holds some significance to my family. As fate would have it, my two brothers and I were each born on the 29th of a month and our birthdays are exactly 4 months apart from each other. Finally, the number 29 was the number I wore during my days playing college hockey at the University of Wisconsin. I now coach high school girls hockey, which has become a true passion of mine. The lessons I have learned from playing and coaching hockey influence the way I go about handling each of my cases, which is with empathy, dedication, and passion. So, why 29th & Law? Because who I am and where I’ve been has led me directly to running my own law firm, my own way.