Heidi N. Urness

Heidi N. Urness is a member with McGlinchey Stafford PLLC in Seattle and co-chairs its cannabis practice group. She advises individuals, entrepreneurs, financiers, producers, processors, retailers and other categories of licensees, as well as cannabis ancillary business and service providers, as they navigate this highly regulated industry. Ms. Urness guides startups that need to establish operations, attract investment and obtain the necessary licenses. She also counsels retailers on real estate, banking and employment matters, and works with investors interested in professionally run and compliant cannabis ventures. In addition, she advises companies that support the marijuana industry, like trucking and transportation providers and packaging designers and suppliers, and she supports clients in a wide variety of disputes and litigation. Mr. Urness assists clients with developing business plans that serve as foundations for winning applications and licenses, creating new business entities, often in the form of financing vehicles, and building out operating agreements that follow strict codes to maximize the future inflow of capital to the business operations and outflow of profits to members. In addition, she works with businesses already involved in the sector to formalize their existing projects and grow them into successful and compliant businesses. Ms. Urness has been named one of the 30 Powerful Cannabis Litigators You Should Know in mg Magazine for 2018, as one of the Top 200 Global Cannabis Lawyers in the Cannabis Law Report from 2020-23, as a Washington Super Lawyers “Rising Star” in Cannabis Law for 2023, and as one of Washing- ton’s Top 100 Verdicts in 2021 in Best of the Bar for 2021. She is a member of the International Cannabis Bar Association (INCBA), a member and featured speaker for Women Grow: Cultivating Cannabis Leaders, and a member of the Washington State Bar Association’s Editorial Advisory Committee and Cannabis Law Section, the National Cannabis Industry Association’s Banking & Financial Services Committee, Women Employed in Cannabis and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). She also served on Law360’s Cannabis Editorial Advisory Board in 2023. Mr. Urness received her B.A. in 2008 in psychology and journalism from Wake Forest University and her J.D. in 2011 from the University of San Francisco School of Law.