Heidi Urness wins Legal Award

A 15-year veteran of the cannabis trade, Seattle-based attorney Heidi Urness took home top accolades for legal work at the Green Market Report Women in Cannabis Awards last month.

Urness, who took on the mantle of Cannabis Practice Group Chairwoman at her firm McGlinchey Stafford two years ago, has taken on every manner of client in the marijuana business, from mom-and-pop companies to big multistate operators, with all sorts of logistical needs.

Although Urness began her legal career in the public defender’s office, she said she was drawn to the cannabis business precisely because of personal experiences while growing up, when “discriminatory practices involving marijuana-related arrests and criminal prosecutions caused injustices in my community and negatively affected the lives of people I loved.”

“In law school, I worked in public and private criminal defense offices with the goal of righting these wrongs to the best of my ability, no matter how small,” Urness recalled.

Even her proudest professional moment has to do not with business, but with justice: In her first months as a public defender she won a motion to suppress evidence against her client, and he walked out of the courtroom a free man that day.

Urness’s biggest obstacles in the cannabis trade typically have to do with misinformation, even from the professional marijuana media, which she said often incorrectly reports on marijuana policy issues.

“On a near daily basis, I read or overhear a statement that is simply not correct with respect to cannabis,” Urness said. “For example, I recently read in one of the nation’s leading news publications that rescheduling will eliminate the risks banks currently face in serving state-legal cannabis businesses – wrong. I also recently read that cannabis businesses must wait until the relevant effective date to take advantage of the anticipated inapplicability of section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code – wrong.”

Looking forward, Urness is excited about further cannabis legal and regulatory reforms at both the federal and state levels.

“Problems that appear ‘new to many industry participants and professionals are old hat in my book. The benefit of having weathered similar storms throughout the past decade and a half is being able to see around corners,” Urness said.

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