Itch for a niche: Some lawyers thrive in specialized practices

Katy Bloomquist Freitag didn’t initially plan on practicing equine law, but it just worked out that way.

Freitag, an attorney with the Bloomquist Law Firm in Park Rapids, was a baby lawyer at the old Popham Haik firm, and her boss Wayne Popham got her into riding horses. When a small purchase-and-sale matter involving a horse came in, the firm had her handle it. Soon she was a horse owner and a horse lover.

“I later worked in-house at Nordic Track, whose owners owned race horses,” Freitag recalled. “They figured I could do work for the company and handle equine matters, too.”

From there the writing was on the barn stable wall. Freitag represented a horse farm in a case that went to the Minnesota Supreme Court, and a practice area was born.

“That’s when it occurred to me that I should focus on equine law,” she said. “It was not only a passion of mine, but it was also an area of law that needed more attention.”

Freitag is among a handful of Minnesota attorneys who practice, either full time or as part of a larger practice, in areas that are a niche, if not downright unusual. There are lawyers who zero in on legal issues involving fashion, life insurance, telehealth, property tax, and injured railroad workers.

Some attorneys find their niche by following a passion, as Freitag did. For others, it’s more of a fluke.

Taylor Rolf, owner and managing partner at Champlin-based Steven H. Snyder & Associates, needed a one-credit course to fill out her law school schedule one semester, and the only one she could find was Assisted Reproductive Technology. That led to a career in surrogacy law.

“The adjunct professor who taught it, Steve Snyder, later hired me to cover an associate’s maternity leave, and I eventually bought his practice,” said Rolf, who exclusively practices surrogacy and third-party family building.

Much of Rolf’s work focuses on gestational carrier agreements. If donor genetics are involved, areas to consider are donor agreements, parentage establishment and even estate planning.

“We also do insurance reviews on surrogate health insurance policies to make sure maternity benefits are covered if they’re acting as a surrogate,” she said.

Even though he never played hockey, Brian Schoenborn, partner at Spencer Fane in St. Cloud, has made a career out of a hockey business practice. For decades he has been involved with the United States Hockey League, the top developmental league in the U.S., and has owned six USHL franchises over the years. He still owns the first one he bought, the Sioux Falls Stampede.

Schoenborn helps with franchise startups, buying and selling teams and general counsel representation — which might mean contracts, immigration work or sports facility development.

“In college I worked in the St. Cloud State athletic department,” said Schoenborn of the entrée into his practice. “The hockey coach, Craig Dahl, suggested that I get involved in the USHL.”

Schoenborn also counsels entrepreneurs who are considering buying an existing sports franchise or starting an expansion team.

“The fact that I was a sports business owner made other people who wanted a team feel like they could call me,” he said. “I didn’t just talk about it, I did it.”

Rachel Osband, an attorney and mediator for Fiddler Osband Flynn in Minnetonka, focuses on state ward adoption.

When Osband started practicing, she did pro bono work for the Children’s Law Center. When she went on her own, she decided to focus on specific family issues, and that led to her current practice. Through that she became more involved in cases where there are considerations about where children should be placed.

“My driving force is always, ‘How can we support the children? How can we do what’s best for the kids within a system that is really not set up for kids?’” she said.

An adoptive parent herself, Osband said that the ideal outcome in state ward adoption is having multiple parties that love the kids.

“The cases that stand out to me are the ones where the parties really come together on behalf of the child, where they pull litigation and the counties out of it,” she said. “Even when I’m representing a relative or a foster parent, I try to come back to what the court needs to know about the child.”

All four attorneys in these specific practice areas said that the specificity of their practices generally doesn’t lead to a lack of work. Sometimes a little clever marketing helps: Freitag used to go to horse shows with hats and saddle pads bearing her firm’s name and logo. Osband gets frequent referrals from county attorneys, adoption agencies and foster families she’s helped.

“Steve Snyder still owns a surrogacy agency, so through that we get a lot of intended-parent clients,” Rolf said. “Most of those clients are international. Otherwise, I get a lot of clients by word of mouth.”

And attorneys in out-of-the-way practice areas also realize that if a practice specialty becomes specialized enough, it can create a corner on a small but busy market.

“From what I see, I do more hockey-related legal work than anyone in the country,” said Schoenborn. “As with any niche, if you go deep enough into it, you end up by yourself.”