Sean B. Berberian
Sean Berberian has extensive experience in cannabis law, business transactions, and commercial litigation. He was previously the general counsel and senior vice president of Harvest Health & Recreation, Inc., where he successfully took the company public in November 2018. Sean has practiced law for over 20 years in a broad range of business litigation and transactional law. Sean has represented a wide variety of business clients from small startup ventures to large public companies. Through his years of practice, he has represented several clients as their general counsel. In recent years, he has concentrated most of his practice on cannabis companies.
After representing Harvest as outside counsel for many years, in 2017, Sean joined Harvest as its inhouse general counsel. For two years, Sean was a member of the company’s executive team and oversaw all legal components of the company, including corporate governance, mergers & acquisitions, real estate, extensive litigation, regulatory compliance of its highly regulated industry, risk management, and intellectual property. Sean built and managed Harvest’s in-house legal and compliance departments from the ground up. The culmination of that work was taking the company public in November 2018. In May 2019, Sean returned to his own practice, taking on a limited number of select business and cannabis clients.
Prior to joining Harvest, Sean was a founding partner of White Berberian, PLC where he worked on business litigation, cannabis law, complex business transactions, and regulatory work.
Earlier in his career, he was a business litigation partner of a national law firm (now Stinson LLP). At Stinson, Sean practiced complex civil litigation, including cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He began his legal career in San Francisco, doing products liability defense with a national firm (Shook, Hardy & Bacon, LLP) on behalf of Phillip Morris and other manufacturers. During law school, Sean also served as an extern for the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for Northern California.
Sean graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State University’s Barrett Honors College in 1996 and then attended the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where he graduated cum laude in 1999. Sean was an editor of a law journal and was published in both academic and law journals.
Sean is licensed to practice in both Arizona and California. Sean is a regular speaker at conferences and organization meetings regarding cannabis law and business, including at: bar associations, the Marijuana Industry Trade Association, Inns of Court, Assisted Living Federation of America, and a guest lecturer at law schools.
Contact Sean to discuss your legal matter
(480) 626-8713 Direct