Hilary V. Bricken

Hilary V. Bricken was a young associate doing business transactions at Harris Moure PLLC in Seattle in 2010 when the then-new legal world of commercial marijuana practice came her way.

She ran with it. By 2017, she was a name partner at the newly-branded Harris Bricken Sliwoski LLP and had moved to California to open the Los Angeles office and helm the firm’s regulated substances practice group to do corporate transactions and regulatory work.

Clients include Gardenhouse Brands, Braxia Scientific Corp., Claybourne Co., Aeriz and PRO Farms.

She said over the last several years, her group has closed more than $100 million in corporate transactions.

“It landed in my lap,” Bricken said. “An entrepreneurial criminal defense lawyer in Seattle saw the business opportunities in his realm of practice. Washington state had legalized medical cannabis since ’98, and he had clients who wanted to set up corporations or register their trademarks. He didn’t want to do it himself, so he came to us. We’re a firm that has always liked emerging businesses. A partner asked if I wanted to take this on.”

Bricken said she was surprised to learn about cannabis as a commercial enterprise. “I was stupefied to learn that this whole industry existed. It wasn’t just a bunch of drug dealers. These were people who wanted to get organized, to have legal structure and legitimacy. It was a long way from the ‘Breaking Bad’ scenario.”

But just in case, Bricken established a firm-within-the-firm called the Canna Law Group. “We felt it was going to be touch-and-go with the feds. We didn’t know then whether lawyers would be prosecuted.”

They came close. One day in Seattle, federal agents did a major sweep of cannabis businesses. Bricken didn’t know whether she’d be next. “I asked a partner, ‘Should we shut it down?’” Bricken said. “He said to give it another day. That afternoon a new client called, wanting to set up a dispensary. I told him what was going on and his attitude was, ‘Fine, less competition for me.’”

She added, “We can joke about it now, but back then, it was stressful. It’s become a lot more buttoned-down.”

Bricken is the lead editor of her firm’s Canna Law Blog, where recent posts on the prospect of cannabis legalization under Colombia’s next president, the green light for medical cultivation in Brazil and state regulations regarding cannabis pesticide testing show the reach of the practice group’s interests.

“We’re doing joint venture work with large-scale cultivators these days,” Bricken said. “It’s a wonderful practice.”

– John Roemer