A Duluth’s Best Bread billboard gave locals a laugh while driving on I-35.

It said, “Need a lawyer? Don’t call us. We’re just a bakery.” The quip was Robert Lillegard’s brainchild.

“So I like to sit around and think of funny things to say. And in this case, I had one,” he said. “I said, ‘Don’t fear the beard, fear the bread.’ And my wife’s like, ‘You better be careful. They’re lawyers.'”

But it turned out the lawyers at Nicolet Law loved the gentle jab.

“I thought, this is wild because they’re doing a play kind of on our billboard, which is really fun,” Russell Nicolet said.

He has an office in Superior and a cabin in Douglas County, so he’d had their baked goods before.

“I was like, this is really cool because I actually like what they make. It’s tasty. And they’re having fun with our billboards,” Nicolet said. “So I thought I’d reach out and see if we could do something fun together. And they were very enthusiastic and collaborative on it.”

Nicolet Law took out a billboard across the highway that read, “Hungry? Call the bakery. Injured? Get Nicolet.” The two businesses also collaborated on a TikTok.

“Sweets and bread and cinnamon rolls may be a little more fun than lawyering, but at the same point, you’ve got to bring some energy and enthusiasm and uniqueness to it, and they clearly do that as well,” Nicolet said.

The two hope to continue their fresh-baked friendship with a merch giveaway and maybe more in the future.

“It’s fun when something’s fun and wholesome and funny, to like connect on that level. I think so much news in general and business news is really grindingly negative all the time, so if you can just have a laugh in a friendly, joking kind of way, I think that’s a sigh of relief,” Lillegard said.

“We say, ‘Be kind and do good,’ and being able to do that with other organizations or businesses that are the same way, that’s just awesome,” Nicolet said.

Duluth’s Best Bread has two locations in Duluth and one in Superior.