While many businesses rely on customers staring down at random ads on their phones, Nicole Bluefort set her sights higher. With billboards advertising the Law Offices of Nicole M. Bluefort placed strategically around Boston and the North Shore, her law firm is bustling with business. “People recognize me wherever I go,” says Bluefort, who launched her firm in 2012 and began advertising through billboards in 2014. “I’ve actually scaled back on them because we get so many calls.”

Bluefort’s firm of 10 attorneys and staff, with offices in Boston’s Seaport and nearby Lynn, provides a wide range of civil and criminal legal services. “We’re a one-stop shop,” says Bluefort, who clerked for two years for Judge Frederick Brown on the Massachusetts Appeals Court before launching her own firm. “People may come to us for a divorce but then have to deal with a Department of Children and Families case or a restraining order, so we end up building a relationship with them.”

As a young attorney, Bluefort felt uncertain about starting her own firm. Then a friend connected her with an attorney who was getting ready to retire and who “took me under his wing and taught me the business aspects of running a firm,” she recalls. The unexpected mentorship helped her overcome the self-doubt she’d been feeling at the beginning. By putting her fears aside and her name on the billboards, she started to get more cases than she could handle.

Today, Bluefort prioritizes mentoring her team. “I live by the words of Oprah Winfrey, who says, ‘A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself.’”