New Partner Spotlight: Jeremy Shaw
May 10, 2023
Earlier this year, Vicente LLP announced our new rebranding and that six of our top attorneys were elevated to partners. In this next post in our special New Partner Spotlight series, we’re proud to share more about our exceptional colleague and new partner, Jeremy Shaw.
Jeremy is a member of the firm’s Corporate Department, where he advises clients in a wide range of corporate matters, including mergers and acquisitions, private placements, debt financing, commercial arrangements, and corporate governance. He has represented public and private companies, buyers, sellers, issuers and investors, giving him a breadth of experience to advise clients of all types at various stages in the corporate lifecycle. Jeremy was named one of “Boston’s Top Lawyers” by Boston magazine and is listed as a “Rising Star” by Thomson Reuters Super Lawyers.
What attracted you to the legal field? And what attracted you to working in the cannabis, psychedelics or emerging therapies industries?
What draws me to law, particularly on the transactional side, is that it’s primarily intellectual problem-solving. And advising clients in a field that is emerging from the illegal, unregulated space into the legal, regulated world is necessarily going to present a lot of unique problems that need to be solved. It’s not often that you get to see a legal industry emerge out of decades of prohibition, so I think the combination of problem-solving and treading new ground is what drew me to this specific field.
What is your specialty and what do you think differentiates you from other lawyers clients could choose?
My practice is almost exclusively focused on corporate transactional work, particularly M&A and private placements, and I also serve as outside general counsel to a number of clients. One important benefit that Vicente has given our industry is that we tend to flex our creative muscles more often than we might otherwise in more traditional industries. I think that approach is ultimately a huge benefit to our clients. So, I think my ability to approach each client and transaction with the understanding that we may need to structure things in a non-traditional way allows me to provide guidance that is really tailored to each client’s particular needs and situation. The “way things have always been done” may not be appropriate for many of our clients, and the natural tendency at Vicente to question the status quo is, I think, something that makes us special.
What markets do you see having big developments in the next 6 months / Where will the big opportunities be in 2023?
On the adult-use side, the regulatory schemes in the tri-state area are just getting off the ground, so there will be growing pains as industry and regulators get to know each other, but you can’t deny the importance of these markets, particularly New York (which I say begrudgingly as a Massachusetts native through and through). So, businesses that can work through these challenges to achieve some early market position I think will ultimately be rewarded.
In markets that are somewhat more mature, I think we’re going to see other kinds of challenges, particularly as wholesale prices drop, which is something we are seeing affect the market right now in Massachusetts, for example. So, there are going to be some big readjustments in those types of markets, but those readjustments could lead to some interesting strategic transactions as companies in need of cash look to peel off assets. Any challenges that arise in a given market will always present an opportunity for the folks that can step in and overcome the obstacle.
Contact Jeremy to discuss how he and his team may be of assistance and stay tuned for our next post in this series about Vicente LLP’s 2023 new partner class.