A Wisconsin lawyer’s ‘cartoon head’ billboards created an unlikely celebrity

At the annual Country Jam USA in Eau Claire, Wis., the songs sound sweeter and the beer runs colder, as its promoters like to say. And Russell Nicolet’s face is everywhere.

Concertgoers encountered Nicolet’s cartoony avatar — wavy beard, bald head, mirrored sunglasses — on billboards all over town. His mug watched over the festival’s entrance gate and hovered above the stage. At the swag tent for Nicolet Law, his Hudson-based personal-injury firm, it was on beer cozies, bottle openers, sweat towels and stickers. And, most recklessly, temporary tattoos.

Few are the lawyers whose faces grace tattoos. And at the festival, the actual Russell Nicolet (pronounced nik-oh-lay), dressed in boots and a trucker hat, seemed humbled by the popularity of the tats — and perhaps a bit chagrined. He hadn’t anticipated the risk of releasing his face into the alcohol-soaked crush: uninhibited fans who flashed skin and asked Nicolet to guess where they’d hidden the tat.

“I’m like, ‘Whoa! I believe you,’ ” Nicolet said. “I totally appreciate the support, but you don’t have to show me!’

The kombucha-swilling, wakeboarding father of five sees enough of his face. It’s propagated on hundreds of billboards across Wisconsin, Minnesota and beyond, rivaling the wide-armed reach of Twin Cities real estate agent Kris Lindahl.

In Nicolet’s many billboards and promotional videos, his bearded, flannel-clad, man-of-the-people brand stands out. Especially in a profession that’s steeped in status, shrouded in complexity and stereotyped for its sharks and shysters. “We’re Midwest folks who happen to be legal professionals,” Nicolet often says, in his nasal Wis-caan-sin accent.

Many founders who serve as their company’s “face” go through life as the loudest voice in a room (pillow pitchman Mike Lindell and auto dealer Denny Hecker among them). But Nicolet’s ego comes off as more tempered.

Consider Nicolet Law’s recent Super Bowl commercial, in which two workers are installing a cartoon-head billboard when the man himself busts through the vinyl. Nicolet quickly apologizes to the workers, thanks them, offers to clean up, and compliments one guy’s appearance: “Nice beard!”

The public may not quite know what to make of Nicolet — “Guy is either a genius or an absolute madman. Maybe both?” one Reddit commenter wrote — but his abundant, cheesier-than-Wisconsin promotions have arguably made him more recognizable to Minnesotans than Tony Evers or Jordan Love (Wisconsin’s governor and the Packers starting QB, for those who don’t know).

In the three years since Nicolet’s billboards saturated Midwest roadways Burma-Shave style, he’s grown his firm from a handful of employees to roughly 70, with more than 20 offices across four states. His approachable brand has led strangers to request a life-size Nicolet cutout to prop behind their home bar and even invite him to their wedding. “It’s become part of the pop culture of the Midwest,” Nicolet said.

Before 1977, Nicolet’s ads would have been banned in many states, because of the American Bar Association’s 1908 declaration that advertising legal services was unprofessional. After the Supreme Court struck down the prohibition, suit-clad personal-injury lawyers became a fixture of the media landscape.

For many lawyers specializing in vehicle accidents, medical malpractice and slip and falls, ads are an integral part of the business model. In most cases, attorneys are paid on contingency, so they have an incentive to review a large volume of leads and consider the odds that they can quickly settle out of court or win at trial. Such lawsuits pay out roughly $50 billion worth of verdicts and settlements nationwide each year. And the country’s largest personal-injury firm, Morgan & Morgan, reportedly puts $200 million toward ads each year to claim its piece of that pie. (Nicolet Law doesn’t share how much it spends.)

Most personal-injury lawyers take a serious, if dull, approach to promotions. Billboards for the dominant Twin Cities-based firms display the partners’ names in a gold frame, or a photograph of the firm’s founder. But some in the industry are known for a more garish hard-sell, with tough-guy nicknames (“Strong Arm” “The Hammer”) and cash-grab imagery (money bags, raining bills).

Compared with the prototypical elite, buttoned-up attorney or ambulance-chaser, Nicolet presents himself as the lawyer-next-door — the son of a nurse and a UPS driver, raised in what was once a rural community outside Green Bay. (“Now it’s kind of a bougie place, because all the Packers move out there and build houses,” Nicolet explained.)

According to his family, Nicolet has been driven, optimistic and extroverted since back when the neighborhood sandlot crew built its own field of dreams, complete with a chicken-wire backstop. As a teenager, Nicolet says he wasn’t especially studious. (“Sometimes you just kind of rebel against everything, and I got a little wild.”) Uncertain about his path to adulthood, he talked with Army recruiters. But his mom asked him to apply to one college, as a favor to her. (”My mom’s a real sweet lady, so I said, ‘Sure.’ “)

That decision eventually led Nicolet to graduate from what was then William Mitchell law school in St. Paul. In 2007, Nicolet rented a one-room office in downtown Hudson, Wis., and hung up his shingle.

Nicolet’s first employee was his cousin, a paralegal who assisted him with consumer legal work, including family-law cases, traffic violations, real estate contract disputes, personal bankruptcy and injury cases. The first lawyer Nicolet hired was his younger brother Adam. (Nicolet now also employs his youngest brother, Benjamin, a lawyer, as well as their sister and mom.)

When bankruptcy work dried up during COVID, Nicolet determined that he’d prefer to specialize in personal-injury law. But narrowing the firm’s focus meant Nicolet needed a plan to bring in more clients. “I had decided some way, somehow, we’re going to make this law firm grow a lot,” he recalled.

Nicolet bought his very first billboard, on Interstate I-94 east of St. Paul, shortly after he opened his office. It featured a photograph of him in the ornate James J. Hill library, and listed all the areas of law he practiced.

It wasn’t a very good billboard, Nicolet now says. (“Way too busy.”) But it did get the greenhorn attorney a lot of attention from judges and lawyers. Not necessarily in the best way, he admitted. “I think some of them thought that I was kind of getting too big for my britches,” Nicolet said.

The assumption within the legal community was that “real lawyers” got their cases from doing good work and then getting referrals from past clients, judges and other attorneys, Nicolet explained. “I think there was a little bit of a stigma, like, ‘Who’s this guy and is he going to cheapen the law practice?’ ”

But word-of-mouth only brings in so many cases, and Nicolet felt he could keep the phone ringing by differentiating himself through advertising. While lawyers who present themselves as tough or elite could appeal to those mulling lawsuits, Nicolet understood that potential clients were often in a vulnerable place. The last thing they’d want, as they recovered from their injuries, was to worry that their attorney might confuse or judge them.

So, in 2021, he and a marketing staffer decided that a cartoon-style rendering of Nicolet’s face would communicate the lawyer “you’d want to have a beer or coffee with,” he explained. “That folksy, your-friend type, humble, Midwest lawyering.”

He showed the cartoon head to his brother Ben, who thought it looked cool. Nicolet ordered a bunch of billboards and then showed the cartoon to his brother Adam, who had the opposite reaction. (Adam says his first impression was, “I thought it was silly.” The sentiment Nicolet recalls was: “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen!”)

Several other lawyers took Adam’s side, Nicolet said. “One of them told me: ‘What are you, the floating-head lawyer?’ ”

Despite the skepticism, Nicolet bought more billboards. And more billboards. (He won’t share how many because he’s running a TikTok contest, with $1,000 prize, to guess the total number.)

He also started making sketch-comedy-style promotional videos. In one, Nicolet raps (rather stiffly). In another, he cheerfully works every job at Kiwk Trip, the La Crosse-based gas station chain that no white-shoe lawyer has probably ever set foot in.

Though one viral Nicolet Law commercial casts Wisconsin-bred comedian Charlie Berens as a billboard-design consultant, Nicolet creates his campaigns in-house, often with the help of marketing manager Cassandra Laabs (who, in one ad, accompanies Nicolet on drums as he struts the stage to heavy metal riffs).

A roomful of lawyers could endlessly debate whether Nicolet runs afoul of the American Bar Association’s current guidelines, which state that “undignified advertising can detract from the public’s confidence in the legal profession and respect for the justice system.”

And there’s still a stigma around advertising among legal practitioners, says Bill White, who oversaw coverage of the profession as publisher of Minnesota Law & Politics and Super Lawyers magazines and now runs the marketing firm ReelLawers. “Even after it was legal, it was very slow to catch on,” he said. “Even today, there are a lot of lawyers who look down on any overt marketing.”

White, who has not met or worked with Nicolet, noted that very few lawyers step back from the all-consuming daily work of writing briefs and making court appearances and think about their legal practice as a business in the way Nicolet has. He cautions that potential clients realize Nicolet has to delegate. (“You’re not going to get the Beard, that’s the reality, but he’s built a firm that’s infused with his values.”)

White called Nicolet’s broad, edgy campaign highly effective: “He’s attracted massive eyeballs,” he said. “And he’s gotten people’s attention.”

The internet, of course has thoughts on Nicolet’s promotions — which his 10-year-old niece has described as “cringe.”

“Looking forward to the inevitable Nicolet vs. Lindahl rap battle to secure the last remaining billboard space in Minnesota,” someone wrote on Reddit. Other commenters were harsher.

“This guy looks like he’d sue his own grandma because her cake was a little dry.” “If you lined up 10 lawyers and he was one of them, he would be the absolute last lawyer I would choose.”

And yet, even the haters have to concede: They all know Nicolet’s name. “I promise when someone has an injury happen, this guy is going to come to mind,” one commenter admitted.

Out at the dusty Country Jam festival grounds, Nicolet was on a lot of people’s minds — in a good way. The swag tent crew helped a couple guys apply Russell-head tattoos to their nipples. A woman taking a selfie with Nicolet said the billboards added a bit of fun to her daily commute. (“When I get injured, I’m calling him,” she volunteered.)

By late afternoon, micro-influencer Seth Hatherly stopped by the tent to give Nicolet a bro hug. The two met through the North Carolina native’s vlogs about the culture shock he experienced when he came to Wisconsin for a job with the Packers.

After Hatherly posted about Nicolet’s billboards (including documenting every one he spotted on a road trip from Minneapolis to Green Bay), the law firm welcomed Hatherly to the state with a surprise gift: a billboard advertising Hatherly’s social handles. “Moving to Wisconsin I didn’t think I’d become best friends with a law firm,” Hatherly said.

When reflecting on how the billboards have changed his life, Nicolet said he continues to enjoy working legal cases, helping clients and growing the business as it expands into Iowa. The only downside to his celebrity is getting stopped when he’s out in public with all his kids (an experience he likens to “herding cats.”)

Nicolet shared a story of how he recently encountered a teenager who asked him to sign his jersey. At first, Nicolet hesitated. “I’m not a pro athlete — I’m not a rock star,” he said. “I was feeling bad, like, my signature’s just Russell Nicolet.” But the kid insisted, even asking “Sign it real big, too, man!”

Despite such rock-star treatment, on the Country Jam grounds, at least, the guy whose face was everywhere appeared not to have let it go to his head. He may have been one of the Midwest’s unlikeliest celebrities, but he seemed most at home among the crowd.

When a band Nicolet wanted to see took to the stage his firm had sponsored, he headed toward it, alone. Then he wended his way through the crowd like anybody else, swallowed up by the Midwest folk.