Fifteen Years of Impact: Vicente LLP’s Journey
By Vicente LLP
Jun 17, 2025
Vicente LLP: A Law Firm Born from a Movement
Fifteen years ago, Vicente LLP began as a bold experiment. When Brian Vicente and Josh Kappel met nearly two decades ago, they came together with original firm co-founder Christian Sederberg to make something that amounts to more than just a regular Colorado law firm.
They founded a new entity—one that begged an important question: Could a law firm be both a provider of best-in-class enterprise legal services and a catalyst for sweeping social change? Over the 15 years that followed, they proved the answer was a resounding yes.
As a recent graduate of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Vicente faced many questions about his professional choices. He chose to commit his budding career to cannabis law at a time when cannabis businesses operated in the shadows, and he was expressly warned against working in the space.
“When I said I wanted to go into cannabis law, my guidance counselors said it was career suicide,” Vicente recalled.
Even then, Brian saw a different future. He started by working to change cannabis laws across the country, beginning with his own backyard. “It was a lot of advocacy work to get the sort of regulations and laws passed,” Vicente recalls in reference to his work leading the campaign for Colorado’s Amendment 64, the first adult-use cannabis law in the world.
“In 2010, Colorado had essentially the only state-regulated cannabis businesses in the world,” Vicente explained. “The firm was launched out of a specific need to professionalize emerging cannabis businesses … many of these sorts of underground business owners came to us and asked the law firm to explain the rules and sort of give that professional advice.”
Hence, Vicente LLP was formed as its first iteration, Vicente Sederberg LLP.
"We were at the forefront of shaping the law … we knew it really well because we helped write it,” shares firm co-founder Joshua Kappel. “So yes, we started this firm with the vision and goal of doing just that.”
But the firm co-founders asked themselves the hard questions and came to a clear consensus. “How do we leverage capitalism to affect positive social change? How do we work at the forefront of decriminalizing otherwise taboo substances and create a new industry—an industry that would then fuel further reforms? That was the vision of the firm from the beginning: leveraging capitalism to end drug prohibition."
Brian agreed, “The firm would be largely a tool for social change,” in addition to a best-in-class legal services provider.
Today, this vision has come into reality.
Major Milestones and Breakthroughs
Colorado’s Historic Legalization Efforts
In 2012, Colorado became the first state in the U.S.—and the first jurisdiction in the world—to legalize adult-use cannabis. That victory wasn’t just political; for Vicente LLP, it was deeply personal.
“We played a sizeable role in the legalization push in 2012,” explained Brian Vicente. “I co-authored that bill, and the firm fueled it.”
The success of Amendment 64 laid the foundation for an entirely new legal and economic framework, one that many other states would follow. At the same time, this winning campaign also ignited Vicente LLP’s reputation as both a legal innovator and an agent for social change—a reputation that it would continue to uphold in the development of Colorado’s psychedelics policies.
Psychedelic Law Reform Leadership
In 2019, Vicente LLP played a pivotal role in the passage of Denver’s psilocybin decriminalization initiative, the first of its kind in the United States.
“We decriminalized psilocybin in Denver,” commented Josh Kappel, the firm’s leading Psychedelics Attorney and pioneer of legal psychedelics access. “This is the first time any government has voted on psychedelic policy in the United States.”
“This led the way for the modern-day psychedelic reform movement, and that led to the Natural Medicine Health Act, which I was one of the main co-authors of and chaired the campaign for. We're now leading the way to, hopefully, the first year of regulated psychedelic care in Colorado… there are a lot of moments to be proud of throughout this journey.”
National Recognition and Expansion
What began in Colorado has since grown national. The opening of the firm’s Massachusetts office in 2013 marked a major expansion and a new chapter in the achievement of Vicente LLP’s mission to reform America’s outdated drug policies.
Vicente and Kappel tapped the skills of cannabis attorney Adam Fine to replicate the Colorado model on the East Coast, which involved first changing the law and then helping people use the reformed policies for business purposes.
“Our expertise in shaping policy was so deep,” explained Josh Kappel. “We got called on by governments and activists to help draft policy nationwide.”
From testifying in state legislatures to advising Tribal governments, the firm has become a go-to resource for crafting effective, ethical, and forward-thinking drug policy.“
Now, in 2025, the Vicente Team can proudly say, in the words of Brian Vicente, “We’ve played a prominent role in thought leadership around common-sense drug policy reform … at the state, local, federal, and Tribal level.”
Furthering Future Federal Reform
By translating Colorado’s lessons into other jurisdictions, Vicente LLP has demonstrated how localized success could become a national model for responsible legalization and regulation. And while state-level wins have driven progress to date, the path to federal legalization is evolving.
Today, Tribal Nations are increasingly driving national cannabis reform through sovereign cannabis programs that Vicente is working to support.
“There’s been a shift,” Brian explained. “Federal legalization is now being driven by state reforms, Tribal programs, and industry-led economic impact. We’re seeing a three-pronged path.”
For decades, advocates believed that federal cannabis legalization would be achieved through bottom-up pressure—city by city, state by state—until Congress was forced to act. While that strategy has made historic progress, with 40 states now permitting medical marijuana and 24 legalizing adult-use cannabis, it hasn’t yet reached the tipping point needed to drive comprehensive federal reform.
According to Vicente LLP founding partner Brian Vicente, that’s because the path forward isn’t singular—it’s evolving.
“We thought that by passing enough state laws, legalizing cannabis or medical cannabis, we’d create enough pressure on the federal government that they would act,” said Vicente LLP founding partner Brian Vicente.
In the past five years, however, two additional forces have emerged alongside state-level reform to reshape the landscape of federal legalization: cannabis programs among Tribal nations and the growing economic impact of regulated cannabis and hemp.
With more than 100 Tribal cannabis and hemp operations already in place and more on the way, their programs demonstrate the success of sovereign regulatory systems and increase pressure on federal agencies to act. Meanwhile, as Tribal cannabis and hemp programs continue to develop, the economic impact among existing regulated programs is becoming harder to ignore. The cannabis industry is now generating substantial revenue and job growth, which has become a persuasive argument for reform in an ever-polarized political climate.
As of 2024, legal cannabis has generated over $4.2 billion in annual state tax revenue and created an estimated 93,000 jobs through nearly 15,000 dispensaries. The industry also boosts local economies, encourages consumer spending, and supports secondary businesses like construction, finance, and software. Nationwide legalization could further increase investment opportunities and save an estimated $3.6 billion annually in federal enforcement costs.
Together, these three forces—state reform, Tribal programs, and economic momentum—are forming a cumulative push toward federal legalization.
Vicente LLP is helping to shape a future through a comprehensive, multi-pronged strategy that leverages the changemakers active across the local, state, and Tribal cannabis and hemp sectors. As the firm looks ahead, we continue to anticipate and inform what America will look like if we finally move past prohibition and toward a more just and regulated future. For countless people across the country, this is a future characterized by personal freedom.
Vicente’s impact isn’t just measured in the laws that it has helped pass or the businesses it has helped launch into success. It’s more prominently measured by the lives improved by safer, smarter cannabis, hemp, and psychedelics regulation we have helped further.
“One giant impact that the firm has had is really changing the entire paradigm around cannabis being part of the criminal justice system. By establishing certain rights for individuals 21 and older, our work has led to arguably millions fewer arrests,” Brian Vicente pointed out. “That’s what I’m most proud of.”
“We’ve dismantled the war on cannabis… and that has had a positive impact on millions,” Kappel added.
Resilience and Vision: Overcoming Challenges and Looking Ahead
Behind every Vicente LLP milestone lies a series of hard-fought battles—legal, political, and cultural. While the firm's victories in cannabis and psychedelics policy reform are often celebrated, the road to change was rarely smooth.
“Our biggest challenge… was the government,” Brian Vicente stated concisely. “We faced opposition from every level… and had to rely upon the people to overcome poor policy set by entrenched institutions.”
“Coalescing people around a shared vision was key,” elaborated Joshua Kappel, who worked with Brian and other members of the Vicente LLP team to push policy reform with no clear roadmap and little institutional support.
To achieve this, the firm turned directly to the people—advocates, patients, entrepreneurs, and voters—to build a movement that would eventually shift policy from the ground up. These are the people who will continue to impact the future of Vicente LLP and the cannabis, hemp, and psychedelic policies in which the firm operates.
Vicente LLP has been just as much of the realization of a dream as it has been the establishment of a company. Over the last 15 years, its founders have been guided by a singular hope: that the firm’s work will not only change the laws regulating cannabis, hemp, and psychedelics, but also that it will change lives.
“In 15 years, I hope people say Vicente made a positive impact… and helped people live purposeful lives while changing the world,” shared Joshua Kappel.
Echoing this statement, Brian Vicente considered the impact this change has had on his own family:
“My kids were born in 2013 and 2014, and they will grow up in a world where cannabis prohibition is kind of like alcohol prohibition, it's just a relic of history. That's due to the work that this firm did.”
The Work Continues
Since its founding, Vicente LLP has not just practiced law—it has made it. Over the past 15 years, the firm has helped shape the future of cannabis and psychedelics policy in the United States and beyond.
For the people who built Vicente LLP, the journey over the past 15 years has not just been professional—it has been personal.
“We grew up together, me and the firm,” Josh Kappel reminisced. “It’s been incredibly rewarding… to see the evolution of both.”
From drafting landmark legislation to launching national reform campaigns, the firm’s track record is filled with pioneering achievements that have transformed industries and impacted millions. As the firm enters its next chapter, Vicente LLP’s legacy will continue to grow—one policy win, one client success, and one life-changing legal shift at a time.