Cannabis Lawyer, Cannabis Licensing, Criminal Defense: Practice Areas

The Office represents clients across a full spectrum of cannabis business issues, from formation of the entity, preparing cannabis business plans, cannabis licensing applications, community impact statements, waste management and regulatory compliance plans, to banking, employment, and government advocacy. We have advised and consulted for hemp and cannabis cultivators, processors, professionals and investors on a number of licensing, business, regulatory, and complex criminal issues. We bring our knowledge of the industry and regulatory landscape, along with our talent and experience in state and federal criminal cannabis law, to bear in aiding our cannabis-industry clients to establish economically feasible, legally compliant business models that achieve their end goals.

We represent a variety of clients in their cannabis licensing application process, as the momentum towards federal marijuana legalization increases and various states enact their own adult-use and medical cannabis cultivation, processing, distribution, sale and delivery laws. We identify and amplify our client's strengths, while also bridging any experiential or other gaps that we may uncover, so that our clients have the greatest chance of succeeding on the merits of their cannabis license applications..     

Legal adult-use and medical cannabis businesses face a number of risks, and often conflicting licensing, regulatory, and compliance issues, given the patchwork of federal illegality and state-specific legalization laws. We represent entities in the legal cannabis market, from small multi-state operators (MSOs) to traditional, legacy market and social equity license applicants, in a broad variety of  matters. The Office has significant experience with cannabis industry operators, the creation of regulatory compliance programs, conduct of employee due diligence, negotiating with various enforcement authorities and regulators, and representing clients in high-stakes criminal cannabis matters and trials.

Joseph A. Bondy is among the most well-respected and preeminent criminal defense attorneys in the United States, earning his reputation over the past twenty-seven years by defending individuals in some of the nation’s highest-profile federal criminal investigations, trials, and sentencings. Mr. Bondy maintains an active trial practice, and regularly undertakes to represent individuals in difficult and complex criminal cases. Well-known for developing creative solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems, Mr. Bondy has won many clients favorable disposition of their case before criminal indictment. He has also won dozens of downward departures and variances from the United States Sentencing Guidelines, saving his clients several millennia of imprisonment, as well as compassionate release of federal inmates during the course of the COVID-19 crisis.