Keynote

I’m Aaron Lukken.  I wasn’t always a lawyer.  My kid sister and I spent a few years abroad as Army brats, and I worked in politics for a while after college.  After meandering from job to job in my late twenties, I finally found a home at the phone company, of all places.  With a decade of telecom sales experience under my belt, I decided at 37 to finally go back and do what I had always intended… study law.

But even at the start of law school, the idea of a generalized practice never really made sense to me.  I wanted something specific, and something that could draw on all the travels of my youth; the only area of the law that was really appealing to me was at the international level.  Of course, I also heard the siren call of the courtroom as a 2L, and discovered that litigation was as exciting as geopolitics and international law.

With a whole bunch of luck—and an amazingly supportive wife—I managed to launch a little niche firm smack in the middle of the map… Viking Advocates, LLC in Kansas City (that’s in Missouri, thankyouverymuch).  My practice combines treaty analysis with litigation strategy; I truly have the best of both worlds.

When I’m not pondering the intricacies of cross-border legal doctrines, I’m either trying to separate heavy objects from their gravitational moorings in the YMCA’s powerlifting room, or contemplating our next overseas adventure with my wife, Peggy (an expert in conflict management and dispute resolution).  Together we have a small civil & domestic mediation firm serving clients in the KC region, she serves as my office manager, and recently re-launched her conflict consulting practice.  Our overbearing and demanding boss is a tabby cat named Minnie, after Professor Minerva McGonagall.