About
Most lawyers who advise cannabis and other heavily regulated businesses learned the industry from the outside. I learned it from inside the operating company. First as the lawyer, then as the General Counsel and Chief Operating Officer, then as the executive who scaled a cannabis business from four employees to more than 250 across four states. By the time I returned to private practice, I had signed the leases, negotiated the supply agreements, hired (and fired) the team, sat across from regulators, raised the capital, and lived through the audits, license transfers, and inspections that most cannabis lawyers only read about in case summaries. That's the foundation I bring to every client engagement. Today my work spans high-compliance business law (cannabis, hemp, gaming, peptides), federal securities defense, receivership and restructuring, and fractional general counsel services. I am licensed in Michigan and Illinois. I have built and run the kind of corporate legal function many of my clients are trying to build right now, which means I tend to spot the problems they have not noticed yet and skip past the ones that look scary on paper but rarely move the needle. I work best with founders and executives who need a real strategic partner, not a vendor sending invoices. The bulk of my practice falls into a few buckets: For companies that are too established for ad-hoc legal help but too lean to justify a full in-house team, I serve as their outsourced GC on a flat-fee or retainer basis. We have helped Michigan cannabis operators cut their legal spend by roughly 30% while increasing the volume and quality of legal work being done. Cannabis and hemp regulatory and corporate work. Licensing, M&A, receivership, alter ego and veil piercing, distressed asset sales, multi-state operating structures, and the unglamorous compliance work that keeps licenses intact.
Practice Areas
Education
- University of Detroit MercyJ.D.
