Organized by topic. Direct answers. If something is missing, email us and we’ll add it.
California cannabis licensees and license applicants — every DCC license type, every jurisdiction from Del Norte to Imperial, all 58 counties. Our client base runs from single-site retailers to vertically integrated multi-license operators at roughly $2M to $120M in annual revenue, across cultivation, manufacturing, distribution, retail, microbusiness, testing labs, and delivery. If you hold or are actively pursuing a DCC license under BPC §26000 et seq., you're in the target profile.
Where we are not the right fit: pre-revenue, pre-application hobbyists who do not yet have a defined project, a site, or capital in place. The economics of a governed compliance engagement don't clear for operators who still need to decide what they want to build. For those founders we recommend starting with the public California licensing guide and coming back once the business case is formed. One thing to watch: we also turn down matters in ban jurisdictions where no legal pathway exists — we will not help you plan around a local prohibition.
A 15-minute scoping call, free and confidential. On the call we confirm fit, map your local pathway, surface any obvious blockers (ownership structure, jurisdiction, timeline, prior enforcement history), and identify which of our 13 service lines fits the work. Within 48 hours of the call you receive a written scope, a defined deliverable list, a timeline, and a fixed fee — no hourly estimates, no surprise bills.
From there, a typical new-applicant engagement moves into intake within a week, first deliverable inside 10 business days, and full file submission on the timeline agreed at scoping. Retainer clients start with a baseline compliance audit in month one and move to a monthly operating cadence from month two. One thing to watch: if the matter is an active enforcement issue, we compress the intake — scoping call, engagement letter, and document preservation instructions can all happen inside 24 hours when the file requires it.
No. Every GreenState engagement is fixed fee against a written scope, billed at defined milestones — project work, retainer work, and emergency enforcement work all. No hourly billing, no contingency, no success fee. The model is deliberate: compliance decisions should be driven by what the regulation requires, not by what maximizes a consultant's upside if a particular outcome lands.
Fixed fee also aligns our incentives with yours on timeline. A billable-hour firm gets paid more when a matter takes longer; we get paid less per hour the longer we stay in it, so we move fast and close cleanly. If scope changes mid-engagement (a new owner appears, a new jurisdiction enters the plan, an enforcement matter opens inside a licensing project), we re-scope in writing before the work starts — never after. One thing to watch: we do offer urgency premiums on enforcement engagements where we respond inside hours — that's a higher fixed fee, not a contingency, and it's disclosed at engagement.
No. GreenState Group is a regulatory compliance consulting firm, not a law firm. We do not provide legal advice, we do not represent clients in administrative hearings as counsel, and nothing on this site or delivered by our team constitutes legal advice. Our scope is defined by the regulatory framework — BPC §26000 et seq., CCR Title 4 §§15000–17905, DCC Disciplinary Guidelines, and the non-DCC agencies that intersect with the license.
What that distinction means in practice: we build the technical compliance record, the SOPs, the CAPAs, the METRC reconciliations, the Form 9101 packets, the evidence binders, the audit memos. When a matter needs privilege protection, an administrative hearing, a legal opinion on statutory interpretation, or litigation, we coordinate directly with your retained counsel or introduce you to a cannabis-specialized attorney from our network. One thing to watch: our work product is consultant work product, not attorney-client privileged — for sensitive internal audits we can run the engagement through counsel so the protection attaches.
Mutual non-disclosure agreements are signed before any substantive client information is shared — typically on or before the scoping call, and always before intake. Every file we touch sits in an access-controlled document vault, surveillance on our side matches what we require of our clients, and staff are bound by confidentiality provisions that survive the engagement.
For matters that require attorney-client or work-product privilege — sensitive internal audits, pre-litigation investigations, voluntary-disclosure scoping, M&A due diligence with enforcement exposure — we engage under counsel's direction through a Kovel-style arrangement (United States v. Kovel, 296 F.2d 918) or through direct retention by the attorney. Under that structure, the audit memo is delivered to the lawyer, not to the client, and privilege attaches to our work. We scope the privilege posture before sensitive work begins, not after findings surface. One thing to watch: once a document leaves privileged status (e.g., by being attached to a regulatory submission), it cannot be pulled back — these decisions are made deliberately.
Yes, with a specific model. GreenState leads the California side — licensing, compliance, enforcement, and operational work inside our jurisdiction of practice — and we partner with established regulatory specialists in each target state for the out-of-state pieces. For multi-state operators, we coordinate the integrated compliance plan centrally so that METRC equivalents, ownership disclosures, 280E posture, and corporate structure stay aligned across jurisdictions, while each state's day-to-day work is handled by specialists who actually practice there.
This is deliberate. California cannabis is a specialist practice; so are New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois, and the rest. Consultants who claim all-states coverage typically deliver a thinner California product than we do, and a thinner out-of-state product than local specialists do. One thing to watch: if your operating model treats all states as interchangeable — same SOPs, same ownership structure, same 280E memo — it is almost certainly out of compliance somewhere. State-by-state tuning is not optional.
Single-project engagements typically run 4 to 20 weeks. Product launches and label-compliance reworks land at the shorter end (4–10 weeks); new state license applications at the longer end (3–9 months end to end, with active consulting work concentrated in a 12–16 week window); ownership restructurings and local permit applications sit in the middle. Retainer relationships are open-ended, renewed quarterly, and designed to run as long as the license is live.
Enforcement and defense engagements run 2 to 6 months depending on the severity of the notice and how far the matter escalates — Notices to Comply often close inside 60 days, full accusations with hearings can stretch beyond six months. Distressed takeovers, where we come in after a failed inspection or a poorly managed prior consultant, typically run 3 to 6 months of concentrated remediation before stepping down to a standard retainer. One thing to watch: project engagements convert to retainer at the end about 60% of the time — that's not a sales move, it's the rational step once the baseline compliance infrastructure is built.
On a DCC filing, you appear as the applicant, licensee, or respondent — the person or entity whose name is on the license. Our work product is attributed to you or, where the matter runs through retained counsel, to your attorney. GreenState Group's name generally does not appear on DCC submissions, hearing papers, or the public license profile, and there is no "consultant of record" disclosure requirement at the DCC level.
Where our involvement does surface is at your option — some clients reference our audit or CAPA work in voluntary disclosures, some prefer not to, and both approaches are defensible. What we do not do is obscure material facts: if a form asks for information about who prepared it or who has operational control, we answer honestly, because failing to do so is itself a violation. One thing to watch: having professional support is not a red flag to DCC; applications we prepare tend to come back cleaner and with fewer deficiency notices than self-prepared files, which quietly improves your standing with the reviewer assigned to your case.
