Nicole Bluefort, 2026 Outstanding Women in Business Recipient

Nicole Bluefort
Managing Partner, Law Offices of Nicole M. Bluefort

Nicole Bluefort started her law practice in her hometown of Lynn, Mass., 15 years ago and later expanded to Boston. In July 2024, she opened an office on Elm Street in Manchester, sensing there was a niche for a practice that could better serve people of color in New Hampshire.

The first thing you hear during a talk with Nicole is a baby in the background. The managing partner of the law firm that bears her name recently became a mom for the first time. Her daughter, Gianna, turned 9 months old on this particular day.

Q. Congratulations! That’s a big step. How’s it going so far?

It’s going excellent. It was definitely a transition, especially with running my own practice, balancing motherhood and everything. But I have a really awesome support system, a great husband, and I couldn’t do it without all of them. They allow me to be the powerhouse that I am and to keep it moving.

Q. What inspired you to pursue a law degree?

That didn’t come until my junior year at Boston College. I initially came in as a freshman thinking I wanted to be a doctor. But to this day I really don’t even know the passion for that. I think I was chasing the title, the prestige that comes with it, the money that comes with it.

Once I learned that I don’t like science and I don’t like math, I took a step back and stopped chasing all these things. Once I decided to be OK with not knowing where I was going in my life is when I decided to go into law school. In my junior year, I ended up becoming roommates with a number of people that were involved in an organization called BALSA, the Black Law Student Association.

At that point, I had no interest in law, but they asked me to be the treasurer. Through that association I started to get introduced to judges and law students. I would run to my dorm after class to watch “Judge Judy,” “Judge Mathis,” always law shows. I also had a thing about advocating for those that were either unrepresented or just didn’t have a voice for themselves. I took a communications law class once I decided to explore this avenue.

After that, I just fell in love with it, and then I decided I was going to apply to law school.

Q. You opened your practice at a rather young age, rather than join a firm. What led to that decision?

I say I was forced. That’s the honest truth. I worked for two years after Northeastern Law School. I graduated with my juris doctor from there, and then also my master’s in public health from Tufts University School of Medicine. It’s a hurdle to understand, yes, I want to be a lawyer, and yes, I want to advocate. But then you have all these opportunities within law that you can do. You could be a prosecutor. You could work for a law firm. I thought while I was still trying to figure it out, that a judicial clerkship would allow me to be able to explore litigation in a general way without having to commit to one area or the other, and then still be able to hone my skills with the researching and writing and learning more courtroom skills.

That was only intended to be a one-year position, but (the judge) offered me a two-year position. Even a year before my position was going to be ending, I was applying to different positions. At the end, I still didn’t have anything. I was unemployed living with my parents.

Then it got to being about three months of unemployment. With all these loans looming and the expectation of being a first-generation college student, my parents looked at me like, what’s law school? where’s the job? where’s the money? I decided, because I wasn’t getting an opportunity, that I was going to create one. And I did that. Here’s the Law Offices of Nicole M. Bluefort, where I was the secretary. I was doing everything on my own. And that was the birth of the law firm.

Q. You’ve been in New Hampshire now for two years, since when you saw a market that was underserved. What inspired that move?

I’d like to say that New Hampshire chose me. I always knew we were on a track to growth. I kept getting these calls all the time for New Hampshire, and I kept having to turn away the business. After two years of just repeatedly getting these calls, I said, you know what? I’m going to fill out that application (to practice law) in New Hampshire.

We have a lot of women in our practice, which the legal profession in general, not just New Hampshire, has not been known for. It’s been male dominated or white male dominated. And here we are, a Black-owned law firm, a lot of diversity, ethnicity, languages. And we’re bringing it to New Hampshire. People got very excited about that. I think it makes us very attractive.