Legal Insights in Cannabis & Hospitality with Melissa Greenberg

Tune into the Roots to Risk Podcast with hosts Eric Schneider and Isaac Bock as they explore the dynamic world of cannabis. In this compelling episode, they sit down with Melissa Greenberg, a senior associate at Helbraun Levey, who brings a wealth of knowledge from her experience in employment practices, litigation, and cannabis law.

Melissa offers a unique perspective on the intersection of hospitality and cannabis, shedding light on the crucial legal and employment challenges faced by businesses in these industries. Discover the importance of setting up robust employment practices from the outset, and learn how proactive legal strategies can safeguard your cannabis business.

With over a decade of litigation experience and a passion for helping businesses succeed, Melissa shares actionable advice on:

• The similarities and differences between hospitality and cannabis employment practices.
• Key legal standards and regulations for cannabis businesses.
• The significance of early implementation of employment policies to mitigate risks.
• Practical tips for onboarding, compliance, and maintaining a positive workplace culture.
• How to leverage legal expertise and consulting resources to navigate the evolving legal landscape.

Don’t miss this insightful episode packed with expert advice to help your cannabis business thrive while protecting its most valuable asset—its employees. Whether you’re a startup or an established company, Melissa’s guidance will equip you with the knowledge to build a solid foundation for success.

Transcript

00:00 Eric Schneider:
This is the Roots to Risk Podcast hosted by Eric Schneider, alongside Isaac Bach. Roots To Risk brings you insights, the latest stories, and long form discussions about the cannabis industry. You’ll hear interviews with industry leaders and their perspective on current and future trends, how they’ve built success and what challenges they have faced. Our goal is to facilitate candid conversations and provide informative content for the cannabis community at large. Let’s go. We have Melissa Greenberg on deck from BR and Levy gonna provide some really great information on employment law and how they operate in the hospitality and cannabis space.

00:41 Eric Schneider:
And I think it’s gonna be really interesting to hear the overlap between the hospitality and the cannabis space. And just a little bit more background on Melissa. She’s a senior associate at Hell, bro Levy, specifically in the employment Practices, litigation and Cannabis group. Melissa’s multilayered and integrative practice allow her to look through a diverse lens as she works to achieve an advantageous results for her clients. In addition to her legal practice, Melissa’s yoga practice is of utmost importance to her.

01:12 Eric Schneider:
She teaches in studio classes in her home borough of Brooklyn, and Melissa has found a natural and organic means of forging a connection between her legal and yoga practices. Hey Melissa, how you doing? Thanks for joining us on the Rooster Risk Podcast.

01:28 Isaac Bock:
Hi. Happy to be here. Thank you.

01:31 Eric Schneider:
Absolutely. So we’d love to just dive into your background, you know, what Hal Bro and Levy is doing in the cannabis space and really just understanding a little bit more about what you do on a day to day and, and your impact in the cannabis space.

01:46 Isaac Bock:
Sure. So yes, I work for Hal Bro and Levy. I’m a senior associate at the firm. We are a full service hospitality, cannabis law firm here in New York City. So we represent restaurants, hotels, cannabis companies, and those companies can be plant touching or not. And I personally, I’ve spent the last 10 years now, which is wild, 10 years in May as a litigator.

02:18 Isaac Bock:
I also have about three years of transactional experience, which has propelled me into the department that I’m currently focusing on there at the firm, which is our employment practices team, where I can levy both transactional and litigation under the employment space. On that falls into both the hospitality industry and cannabis industry. So yeah, we service as clients in both of those industries and well, in a number of practice areas, licensing real estate, employment, litigation, corporate, and trademark.

03:02 Eric Schneider:
Awesome. And

03:03 Melissa Greenberg:
Sounds like you have a, a busy, busy plate,

03:06 Isaac Bock:
<laugh>. Yeah, just, just a little, just a little filled, but luckily I don’t, I don’t try and pretend to, you know, fill myself in all of those practice areas. If anybody tells you they do, I would actually be a little bit weary. I specifically am in employment and litigation, but, but yeah, we’ve, we’ve, there’s a lot of crosswork that, you know, which is good and you, you collaborate with a lot of different people and learn, learn the industries, you know, the full extent of an industry when you understand each different area of law and policy, how it affects different practice areas.

03:45 Eric Schneider:
Yeah, and it, it’s very, I mean, as you know, you know, Isaac and I, in our day jobs, we work on the, you know, commercial insurance side, so like employment practices, liability insurance, I is definitely one of the, the biggest topics that we bring up with our clients. And I think it, it often gets swept under the rug a little bit, but ironically, it’s one of the most claim heavy policies that, that we see. And I’m sure, you know, that’s no surprise to you, you know, when should companies start thinking about, you know, either bringing on resources in house or working with a firm and, and individuals such as yourself?

04:23 Eric Schneider:
Because I feel like people are like, ah, I’m early on, I’m early stage. Like I don’t, you know, it’s, it’s not that big of a deal and like, care about it more and more as the organization grows and scales. But, you know, for me, I think it’s important to set principles and put in certain parameters in place early on to set the, the organization’s culture. But was curious about, you know, your thoughts on that and when organizations start to think about their employment policies within the organization.

04:55 Isaac Bock:
Yeah, I mean, you said it like the sooner the better. Honestly, even when the, the cannabis company, whether it’s retail cultivation, whatever it is, or your restaurant, whatever it might be, like, even when it’s at an idea mode, that should be one of the areas that you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re putting into your business plan so that you can, you can finance the project, you know, appropriately. Because the sooner you plan correctly, the less exposure you face when it comes to labor unemployment.

05:34 Isaac Bock:
Obviously you can never fully shield yourself because, you know, you can’t control other humans, even though we might try to, but, you know, if you are working towards and financing having either somebody in-house do your HR or working with a firm like ours or, you know, another employment firm, although obviously recommend ours, you know, then you’re, you’re setting yourself up for success as early as possible, if you know, and a lot of companies, certainly in cannabis, but it is very similar in hospitality, unless you’re like a well established hospitality group, which we could say is almost like akin to an MSO in some ways.

06:17 Isaac Bock:
Like you’ve got the big players and, and then you’ve got startups, and then you’ve got those that are somewhere in between in growth mode. So, you know, and I think if you can’t afford, if it’s not within your budget to have an in-house hr, then you certainly should be working with an, an employment lawyer. We act as general counsel pretty much to a lot of those companies. And, and then maybe then you reach a point where you are in growth mode, where you have both, where you have in-House HR that you go to for those day-to-day questions that you might have.

06:54 Isaac Bock:
But then that in-house HR goes to us and says like, oh, we just got this question on tipping. I need a legal perspective on this. And then working together because HR and lawyers can work together on, you know, crafting ideas and strategies.

07:16 Melissa Greenberg:
No, that makes a ton of sense. And you, you touched on some of the similarities, and obviously as campus has continued to grow, there are individuals coming from, you know, different walks of life into the campus space. So from the employment, you know, legal perspective, what have you noticed or kind of major differences, if there are any for these companies as they’re getting up and running?

07:38 Isaac Bock:
Within between who, I’m sorry,

07:41 Melissa Greenberg:
Sorry. Like more traditional businesses like hospitality, which I know you guys focus on and you know, companies in the canvas space.

07:49 Isaac Bock:
Yeah, so I think that, I think that there are a lot of similarities because cannabis is, you know, there’s the medicinal component of com of cannabis, and then at the same time there’s the hospitality component of cannabis. Like there’s that gray line that you know of like what’s recreational hospitality and what’s medicinal. And they kind of are moving together on parallel paths and often crossing. And so I think that there’s the similarity there just based on like the industries, you know, chefs coming over to cannabis, cannabis coming over to chefs and vice versa.

08:29 Isaac Bock:
What I think is the most notable difference, at least at this stage in New York cannabis specifically, is that there is a hospitality wage order that lawyers and restaurateurs and, you know, people in the hospitality space can go to from a legal perspective and say, what are the regulations? What are the rules and how are they implemented?

08:54 Isaac Bock:
And how, how has, how have judges, how have judges decided on them? Whereas in cannabis, yeah, you have murder and you, and you have these regulations that have rolled out, which as we know have been, have received a lot of pushback, including from our firm on behalf of some of our clients. And, and there’s not necessarily, first of all, there’s no separate wage order yet. I don’t know if there ever will be, or if it’ll, what, what it will fall under if it’s just the general wage order in New York.

09:26 Isaac Bock:
But like, you know, when you have questions, for example, that come about tipping, which will come up in retail, right? Then what, what do they turn to? And are we just applying New York City? Are we just like, because there’s nothing different yet. Yes. So, but you know, what happens when there is a wage and hour dispute at a, at a dispensary, right?

09:51 Isaac Bock:
Are people looking to the hospitality wage order or are they, or are they looking to at a, at a different wage order? And you know, it’s not necessarily falling under hospitality. So, you know, yes, we’re looking at other ones and that creates a model that firms are working off of, but there’s not necessarily even remotely the the same amount of case law to go off of. Yeah. And I think people are very, you know, there’s a lot of mixed emotions about the litigation that’s been going on in the state, even myself included.

10:28 Isaac Bock:
I have mixed emotions about it and I’ve filed a lawsuit, you know, and we all want this industry to succeed. And with that, in my opinion as someone who has been litigating for 10 years, is that in order for an industry to continue to evolve and to propel forward, the unfortunate fortunate thing is that you do need litigation. ’cause that is how policy develops. Yeah.

10:54 Eric Schneider:
I mean, once upon a time, the hospitality space was in a similar point. Right. You know, and it’s just to your point, it it’s a matter of time and, and creating those policies through litigation to set the precedent. It sounds, it sounds like there’s not really a true standardization which is present in the hospitality space. Is that accurate? Right.

11:18 Isaac Bock:
Yes. No, that’s, yes, that is accurate. And you know, I, I’ve discussed with many attorneys, not just at my firm, but other cannabis lawyers, other employment lawyers about, you know, what does it look like for cannabis in that space when you’re dealing with the same sort of issues that come up, whether you’re retail dispensary or you’re, you know, a restaurant or a bar or whatever, like the same types of things are going to come up.

11:53 Isaac Bock:
Yeah. And it’s just a matter of time. I mean, they, a lot of them already have. And so coming back to your original question about like making sure that people are setting themselves up for success as early on as possible, it’s like making sure that these companies, especially startups, but even the ones that are, you know, a little bit beyond the startup phase, you know, maybe they’re moving into New York now and retail like that, they’ve really spent the time, energy, and money, which is true, the money to invest in themselves because the business cannot safely grow if they’re not supporting their employees.

12:36 Isaac Bock:
Yeah. And like sometimes there’s, you think of an employment lawyer and, and maybe it’s like, well, there’s this divide. Is it the employee against the employer? It’s like, no, everyone’s working together, the employer’s there to make your life safe, profitable, everything like they, they’ve created a business for you to be a part of. And that has to be the employer’s mindset, that there is this integration between the employers and the employees. And the only way to really effectuate that is to make sure that you’re implementing the appropriate legal standards and regulations into your business.

13:16 Melissa Greenberg:
Yeah. What are kind of some of those, you know, SOPs and regulations that are most important early on to kind of set these companies up for success?

13:25 Isaac Bock:
Yeah, I think, you know, origi onboarding is like the first thing you have to look at, you know, what are the types of documents that I need to make sure I’ve provided to my new hire that the minute they start, like, and you, you think it would just be like, okay, I have this checklist and I’m following it all and I’m giving, but it’s not, I mean, it should be, but most companies, a lot of companies, they either don’t know what documents they need.

14:00 Isaac Bock:
They haven’t, they don’t have the resources main either an HR person or, or an attorney who’s following up with them and saying like, have you gotten this signed document from this person? Are you keeping it in the personnel files? Like, you know, speak super organized in that regard. Have you, you know, have you set a date for, you know, trainings, whether that’s workplace training and also, you know, sexual harassment trainings and all of those things that you could lay that you can rest assured that you’ve done everything as the employer that you can to make sure you’ve brought on a new hire legally correctly.

14:48 Isaac Bock:
And you’ve, you’re attending to them throughout the year by making sure their pay stubs reflect the correct information, that the tipping policies are correct, that you have employee handbooks that are being updated every single year, that you have them reviewed and signed by their employees, that you offer people the opportunity to talk about things when they’re confused. And, you know, those are just some of the things that, you know, you really need as an employer.

15:20 Isaac Bock:
It’s, it’s essential to, to factor into your, to your business. And, and that’s not even just when you start, because the laws change every year, you know, I mean all the time. So at least in hospitality, you know, they’re always, always changing and updating. And so, you know, how are you, how can you expect somebody who is, you know, owning and operating let’s, I keep going to the retail, but like, yeah, a dispensary who’s dealing with 500 million things to just make sure that they’re, you know, legally and safely like operating this shop.

16:00 Isaac Bock:
And then also expect them to be doing all of these other things. It’s really, really hard. The laws are made, you know, are, are very difficult for employers to succeed at without the help of their in-house or general counsel.

16:15 Eric Schneider:
Yeah. And I think also something too, you know, before we were, you know, acquired by a larger organization, like we used A-A-P-E-O in Justworks, right? A PO they were super helpful and valuable for a lot of the things that you had mentioned. And I just feel like there’s not a lot of great solutions that are available for cannabis operators similar to that. ’cause like Justworks, Augusto, like a lot of them won’t work with cannabis operators. Correct me if I’m wrong. Like are there any resources, you know, obviously you mentioned, you know, when a company can bring someone on in-house hr, you know, hire a firm like yours, but like for the everyday maintenance for an early stage company, is there anything that you’ve seen, you know, helpful for companies to stay organized, like a PEO for small businesses in the cannabis space or, I don’t know, I was just curious to get your thoughts on, ’cause I think, ’cause I think where we see a lot more of the challenges is early on before companies start to take this like serious.

17:22 Eric Schneider:
But like, if you don’t set the foundation early, I think it’s just gonna bite you in the butt later on. So was just curious to, to get your thoughts on that.

17:30 Isaac Bock:
Yeah, I mean, I mean just at a, the, the first thing that comes to mind is the type of resources that we as a firm provide. Yeah. I mean we do, we do monthly webinars in employment where we’ve slowly been starting to integrate the cannabis industry into those discussions. So, and I have clients and prospective clients who tell me all the time, like, oh my gosh, you totally saved me on that thing. Like, I heard it on your webinar.

18:01 Isaac Bock:
Like, we’re not hiding this information. Yeah. And we’re we, and whereas a lot of professionals do, they don’t wanna give information without being retained. And I think that, and that’s just not our policy. Like we, we want, we wanna help the hospitality industry. We’re very embedded in the hospitality industry and we’re very embedded in the cannabis industry. And we wanna see these industries and these industry players succeed.

18:25 Isaac Bock:
And offering that information isn’t giving away free legal services. It’s sharing with you how you might succeed. And then, you know what, come to us and we’ll help you implement that. ’cause that’s the difference, right? Anyone can look up a law. It’s, it’s how do you implement that? And that’s what our job is. And so, you know, attending webinars and attending different panels, I go to other law firms, webinars all the time. I mean, virtually like, I, I always do because I’m like, let me hear how they, what their perspective is. Like, I was just talking about this with a colleague of mine.

18:58 Isaac Bock:
I think lawyers, like a lot of lawyers have this understanding of like, you’re behind your desk, you’re doing your thing where lawyers are meant to collaborate, minds are meant to work together, you know? And so that’s our practice. And that’s one thing that I’ve, I’ve been at this firm now almost a year in August, and the, the, one of the greatest things that I, that I’ve gotten out of this firm so far is the immense pride that the people feel there in collaboration.

19:25 Isaac Bock:
And so that was just a side note. I, I think like, but yeah, like attending those webinars and attending those types of panels, which are usually free, that’s something I would do. And then also, you know, I think you’re, you’re right, there are a lot of companies that won’t yet touch it and that, and that won’t yet step in. But there’s also like a lot of consulting services and consulting companies that are either associated with law firms, accounting firms, you know, you, you got like that you can reach out to those people and then say like, this is, this is the specific thing I need help with.

20:03 Isaac Bock:
Is there either a consultant at your firm who can help me or can you guys connect me with somebody? I think in cannabis specifically, it’s really embedding yourself in the, with the right people and asking questions. Like people want to answer your questions. So it’s not as clear as maybe other industries where you, you kind of just like, you know, sign up for something and you’re good to go. There’s some, obviously some federal parameters here, but I think there’s more resources than people think.

20:39 Isaac Bock:
They just have to put like take, you just have to take that extra step, ask that extra question, sometimes pay a little bit to get a little bit more. And that’s just how business, you know, can evolve, I think. Yeah.

20:53 Eric Schneider:
And I think, I think also too, like the cannabis space is obviously growing immensely, but it’s still very small and I feel like everybody is like one connection away from like what you need, right? Like, like our clients will reach out to us all the time, to your point, we may not be able to directly help with that, but typically we can point them in a, in a, the appropriate direction and help guide them to the end result that they’re looking for. Right. And I think to your point, it’s, you know, not being afraid to look for help in areas that you’re unsure of and, and always ask the question and double check.

21:27 Eric Schneider:
You know, I always say to check twice, cut once and, and just making sure that you’re doing the appropriate things correctly early on that are gonna set the organization up and have a great foundation to build on. Not trying to alleviate the mistakes, you know, moving forward. Right. I, I think that’s really important. So, no, but really appreciate your time, Alyssa, and, and this has been a, a great one. And just like I said early on, something that I think is super important, that gets a little bit glazed over at times and, and can be a really great asset to the organization, but can also be a true detriment if it’s not handled appropriately.

22:08 Eric Schneider:
So thank you for your time and, and have a great rest of your day. Of course,

22:11 Isaac Bock:
You too. Thank you both. It was really nice to see you. Have a great day.

22:17 Eric Schneider:
Another great one. And a topic that I think we, we really haven’t broached as of yet, and something that is just super important I think for setting the organization up for success in the long term is, is addressing your organization’s employment practices early on and setting a quality foundation to really take care of your employees and also mitigate the organization’s risk and, you know, make sure, I think the one thing that she really put forth is like sometimes there could be this interesting dynamic of like leadership and employees and there could be friction, but really to her point, employees should be welcome and they’re a part of the organization and drive the organization’s growth and everybody should be on the same page.

23:05 Eric Schneider:
And I think the organizations that take pride in their employment practices and making sure that it’s very much prioritized are the ones that are gonna be successful in the long term.

23:21 Melissa Greenberg:
A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean I think a lot of times people overlook the human capital aspect of their business to kind of focus on other items and to Melissa’s, you know, many valid points. Like it’s kind of one of the most important things you need to have squared away so you don’t have any internal issues. You know, I think we’ve seen more companies fall apart ’cause they’re gonna take care of the right people then a lot of other reasons that they haven’t succeeded in the long run.

23:51 Eric Schneider:
Absolutely. And, and these are things that are not unique to the cannabis space. Right. But what is interesting is that most industries have some legal precedent in that, that organizations can fall back on and look to in order to have guidance. We just don’t really have that as much in the cannabis space. And it was very interesting that you put that as like, litigation unfortunately is how you get there. So not surprising that we’ve seen that, but hopefully organizations can continue to, to learn from its precedent, predecessors and continue to, to grow.

24:28 Melissa Greenberg:
Yeah, I mean we see it on the insurance side. You know, we don’t have the claims data that other industries have and that’s kind of led to some of the premium discrepancies we’ve seen over the years. So, you know, to her points, you know, and what we do and as the industry overall continues to grow, everything should normalize a bit and there’ll be more precedence across the board on, you know, what’s going on within these businesses.

24:52 Eric Schneider:
Absolutely. All right, ib, until next time, appreciate you.