Clients in the cannabis industry come to me for all types of reasons: to get advice on conflicting regulations, to set up new business ventures, and to resolve disputes. Others ask, “How do I get my own stake in this industry? What are the avenues and requirements to begin?” No matter their background, clients come to me for support and results. I have a decade of experience in this industry and I love to tell clients, “You can go back to focusing on what you do best. I've got this.”
Heidi Urness has a national reputation in the cannabis sector. She is a skillful, tenacious, and results-focused attorney who advises licensees, investors, ancillary goods and services providers, and more as they navigate and prosper in this highly regulated industry.
Leveraging more than a decade of experience advising cannabis industry participants, Heidi crafts compliant, creative, and profitable strategies for marijuana, hemp, and traditional businesses navigating the ever-changing legal landscapes of cannabis. Her practice spans the industry life-cycle, advising startups that wish to establish operations, attract capital, and obtain the necessary licenses as well as guiding established companies to expand operations, protect or defend their intellectual property, or amend corporate governance documents in compliance with strict laws and regulations. Heidi extends these services to a wide range of cannabis, cannabis-related, and traditional businesses including product manufacturers, the food and beverage industry, advertisers and marketers, real property owners, and transportation providers, as well as investors, innovators, and more.
Heidi’s reputation for resolving disputes through cooperative negotiation, skillful arbitration, and aggressive litigation in administrative, state, federal, and appellate courts extends beyond the cannabis industry. She enforces, protects, and defends the rights of cannabis, ancillary, and traditional businesses alike on a wide variety of issues ranging from defeating state- and municipal-level administrative violations to resolving complex business and compliance issues raised in warning letters issued by various federal agencies. Additional examples in which Heidi has obtained successful results on behalf of clients through litigation include internal corporate disputes; fraudulent solicitation and securities-related conduct; intellectual property disputes between similar (and, in some cases, intentional knock-off) products and brands; disputes regarding competing rights to ownership, possession, and income derived from real estate; employment litigation related to wrongful termination, harassment, retaliation, and unpaid wages, and cannabis-related drug-testing policies and procedures; contract-related disputes; and more.
Heidi and her team also partner with financial institutions and service providers to pioneer programs that allow them to provide depository, lending, and additional services to cannabis-related businesses. Heidi and her team also partner with insurers of state-sanctioned marijuana businesses to draft novel policies and amend existing policies to evolve with the rapidly changing cannabis industry.
Heidi is a leading author on CBD, hemp, and marijuana law, and a regular contributor to many of the nation’s premier publications including Bloomberg, Green Market Report, Marijuana Venture, and the Cannabis Law Journal. She and her team have earned numerous national accolades, across a wide range of cannabis industry groups, as well as in esteemed legal circles. She has been asked to speak throughout the nation on the legal landscapes affecting marijuana, hemp, and cannabinoid-related businesses, and also offers CLEs to educate other attorneys regarding cannabis law issues.