New attorney hangs his shingle in Joseph

Published 6:00 am Tuesday, August 5, 2025

JOSEPH — There’s new lawyer in Wallowa County, one who also wears the hat of the Alpenmeister.

Stefan Hasselblad, who with his wife, Molly, took over a couple years ago running Oregon’s Alpenfest, recently opened his day job as the sole attorney at Eagle Cap Law. The practice is at 83365 Highway 82, Joseph.

Hasselblad primarily focuses on litigation, though he has experience in a wide variety of legal pursuits.

A native of Salem, he got his undergraduate degree at New York’s Columbia University before joining the U.S. Army during the Iraq War. After his service, he managed to get into Harvard Law School. That came before a stint with Washington, D.C., firm that had him doing prosecutorial work in West Virginia.

But he always wanted to get away from the big city.

“I decided I wanted to be closer to home, closer to family, so I moved to Boise right before pandemic,” he said.

There, he met Molly and she was the one who lured him to Wallowa County.

“Her grandfather ranched along Crow Creek. The family ran pack teams in Hells Canyon,” he said. “She’s very connected to Wallowa County and grew up going to Alpenfest.”

The Hasselblads married in Boise, but started coming here during pandemic “because this area was more open than anywhere else. Then we decided we wanted to move here in 2021.”

They bought a small ranch on Lime Quarry Road just outside Enterprise. The ranch gives them a chance to work with their hands and enjoy the outdoors.

“I always planned to settle down on some land I can work on,” he said. “I enjoy working with my hands, raising cattle, sheep, chickens, fixing fence from time to time. It gets me out of the office.”

But Hasselblad is always grappling with the law and aims to do some good with it.

“I’m doing this essentially to help people out” he said. “In the county, I think there’s a need for legal services. I like solving problems.”

In addition to litigation work — handling lawsuits — Hasselblad handles probates, wills and trusts, writes contracts and other areas. He enjoyed working as a prosecutor, but that’s handled by the district attorney and a private attorney is not allowed to wear both of those hats.

He recalled one of the most complicated cases he’s ever dealt with was when he worked in D.C. and helped settle a dispute between two health care companies. The two had what he believed was an honest disagreement involving trade secrets and technology that could pilfer them.

“I think both sides were in good faith and it was hard to cut through and figure out a good solution for both sides,” he said.

In the few years between when the Hasselblads moved here and Stefan’s opening his law office a couple weeks ago, he worked largely from home remotely. He even kept working with the Boise firm he was once employed by.

“But living here full time and working in Boise, just wasn’t going to work,” he said.

Hasselblad said the the law is getting more complex. As lawmakers make more laws and attorneys have to keep up with them, every court decision makes for new precedents that can affect later cases.

“It never gets simpler,” he said. “In general, with the nature of society, the complexity of the legal system is to grow. … One case makes for an exception and another makes an exception to the exception and so on. As an attorney, you’re supposed to be able to untwist those exceptions.”

But advances in technology do help.

“I don’t have to go read through volumes of law books,” he said. “Computers and (artificial intelligence) tools make it a lot easier to search for. It’s quicker with these tools, but it also adds layers of complexity.”

For now, Hasselblad has no plans to try for a seat on a bench. He’s content with his legal practice and working the ranch. He and Molly also hope to start a family.

That, and he just enjoys Wallowa County.

“What attracted me here is the mountains, he said. “I try to get out into Hells Canyon or other places.”

And he’s glad to offer another legal mind to help locals navigate the legal world, given there are only a handful of attorneys in the county.

For more information about Hasselblad’s business, click here.