McDermott Will & Schulte, a global law firm

Food, beverage, and agribusiness companies are under pressure to scale across global markets while preserving consumer trust in product safety and quality. The regulatory landscape is multilayered, with overlapping requirements across products, suppliers, and jurisdictions. Our food, beverage, and agribusiness lawyers help you navigate this complexity so your business can move forward as market and regulatory conditions evolve.

Our agribusiness law practice represents participants across the industry ecosystem, including growers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, trade associations, restaurants, and investors. We integrate legal guidance with business strategy, helping you preserve brand value while supporting the commercialization and distribution of products throughout the supply chain.

We bring firsthand regulatory and policy insight to advise you on developments that can impact your business. Our team includes lawyers who previously served in senior positions within federal agencies, on Capitol Hill, and in trade and industry organizations. Leveraging that experience, we advise you on compliance, investigations, enforcement actions, and other regulatory and policy matters before key agencies, including:

• US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
• FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
• Department of Justice (DOJ)
• US Department of Agriculture (USDA)
• USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS)
• USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS)
• USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)
• USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS)
• Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB)
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

Our regulatory experience spans food safety and quality control programs, recalls, labeling and advertising matters, import and export requirements, licensing, e-commerce, alcohol regulation, supply chain controls, and trade policy issues affecting global market access.

As regulatory scrutiny and operational pressures increase, so can the likelihood of disputes. Our lawyers represent you in high-stakes consumer class actions, product liability and toxic tort claims, false advertising disputes, and supply chain and distributor conflicts. We also advise you on internal investigations, congressional inquiries, and regulatory enforcement proceedings that can impact your operations and reputation.

To support growth across new markets and product lines, we guide you through domestic and cross-border transactions – including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, financings, restructurings, and strategic investments across the US, Europe, Asia, and other global markets. We also help you protect and commercialize agribusiness intellectual property, while navigating the antitrust, regulatory, tax, and operational issues that affect your ability to grow.

To remain competitive, food, beverage, and agribusiness companies must evolve and innovate to meet the demands of an expanding population. As your business scales, our food, beverage, and agribusiness lawyers help you manage regulatory, operational, commercial, and reputational risks, so you can adapt to change without disrupting your business.

Healthcare and life sciences companies operate under the most difficult circumstances. They face pressure to drive innovation and growth while navigating intense government oversight and stakeholder scrutiny. Our lawyers guide you through critical business decisions, complex regulatory frameworks, and evolving market pressures – so you can lead transformation in a highly regulated environment.

Year after year, we are named “Healthcare Practice Group of the Year” by Law360 and ranked by PitchBook as the #1 law firm advising healthcare private equity investors. As one of the top healthcare law firms in the US, we represent every major stakeholder in the ecosystem – from healthcare providers and health systems to life sciences companies and investors.

Our global team delivers integrated legal counsel across regulatory, transactional, intellectual property, litigation, and other business-critical matters. Having served in leadership roles both in-house and within government, we provide the legal, commercial, and regulatory guidance you need across health and life sciences law to shape the future of the industry.

Our health and life sciences lawyers have held senior roles across key government agencies including the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and Department of Justice (DOJ) – giving us unique insight into the enforcement challenges you face.

We don’t just understand how regulations are enforced – we know how healthcare policy is developed. Through McDermott+, our dedicated healthcare policy and strategic advisory arm, we help you navigate and shape the policy landscape that influences the industry. With a team that includes lawyers, physicians, policy professionals, data analysts, and veterans of Capitol Hill, we advocate for policies that support your healthcare mission.

Our lawyers also guide you across the life cycle of transformative deals, from formation and financing to commercialization, partnerships, and exit. We help you structure transactions that are aligned with market realities and designed to deliver long-term value.

From securing investment and commercializing innovation to scaling operations and protecting your market position, we support you at every stage of growth. Our team develops integrated legal strategies that help clear the path for your breakthrough technologies, next-generation therapeutics, AI-enabled healthcare solutions, and innovative care delivery models.

Private equity firms operate in high-stakes environments where speed, execution, and risk directly impact investment returns. Our private equity lawyers advise sponsors and their portfolio companies throughout the investment life cycle. We help you execute transactions, manage risk, and address the legal, commercial, and regulatory issues that impact how your investment performs.

Our private equity team includes more than 150 lawyers in 20+ offices worldwide. Working across disciplines including finance, tax, antitrust, investment funds, restructuring, and litigation, we provide integrated guidance to support domestic and cross-border investments across industries and asset classes.

We advise you on acquisitions, dispositions, recapitalizations, carve-outs, minority investments, joint ventures, and other strategic transactions. Our private equity lawyers structure deals and negotiate terms to help you manage risk, create value, and support performance across all stages of your investment – from fundraising to exit.

Competing stakeholder interests often lead to disputes. Disagreements over governance, deal terms, and post-closing obligations can create significant exposure for private equity firms and portfolio companies. Our litigators work alongside deal teams to help you navigate disputes while preserving enterprise value. We represent you through mediation, arbitration, and litigation in state and federal courts, including the Delaware Court of Chancery.

With one of the most active transactional practices in the US, we understand how complex deals are structured, negotiated, and executed. By combining deep market knowledge with cross-disciplinary capabilities, our private equity lawyers help you mitigate risk and advance your strategic goals throughout the life cycle of your investment.

The biggest names in the alcohol industry turn to our intellectual property lawyers to protect the integrity of their most celebrated trademarks. We offer comprehensive services covering portfolio management, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, copyrights, licensing transactions negotiations, brand identity policing programs and, when needed, litigation to protect intellectual property assets by pursuing prosecution of violators.

Our consumer protection and unfair competition team helps alcohol industry clients stay a step ahead of emerging issues in the digitized retail world. Soup to nuts, we handle the federal and state compliance, investigations and litigation that come with operating in the most competitive markets. We regularly advise on appropriate and adequate disclosures throughout advertising, marketing, product labeling and packaging, social media endorsements and reviews, subscription services and automatic renewals.

Our tax lawyers offer comprehensive services to alcohol industry clients covering M&A tax structuring, federal tax planning, state and local tax matters, and cross-border transfer pricing.

We handle tax and corporate restructuring to maximize benefits, represent clients during audits, and defend programs challenged by tax authorities. Because alcoholic beverages are subject to a complicated variety of excise and occupational taxes, companies seek our counsel on minimizing tax exposure, addressing TTB audit issues and negotiating offer-in-compromise settlements.

Whether negotiating a settlement or offer-in-compromise with the government, participating in proceedings before state alcohol control authorities, litigating a trade practice action, or defending against a criminal indictment, we combine our extensive alcoholic beverage regulatory experience with civil and criminal litigation to protect our clients’ interests.

Buying and selling alcohol companies is fraught with a host of regulatory complexities that when left unattended can bring unforeseen harm to a deal. That’s why you need an M&A team with decades of multidisciplinary alcohol regulatory-focused experience handling your deal from start to finish—and beyond.

McDermott Will & Schulte’s Alcohol M&A team identifies and addresses regulatory issues before and at the onset of a deal, instead of cleaning up after the fact, by providing strategic advice and practical solutions throughout all phases of the transaction. This includes in-depth counseling on deal opportunities and favorable structures before a deal is even initiated. Given the depth and breadth of our practice, we know where the regulatory landmines are in the alcohol space and how to avoid them, whether those relate to excise tax, acquisition structure, “tied-house” management, intellectual property, or diligencing formulas and labels. We guide you through the regulatory ins and outs so that your deal closes seamlessly and successfully.

The legal cannabis industry was expected to triple to $32 billion by 2022 and to more than $47 billion by 2028. With private equity, cosmetic, alcohol and non-alcohol beverage, health, and wellness companies beginning to invest, the cannabis industry continues to grow and evolve at a rapid pace. This anticipated investment and growth, combined with an expanding list of states legalizing marijuana for medical and recreational use, has led to rapid changes to legislation and regulations that are important for companies to carefully consider.

Our multidisciplinary team of lawyers provides clients with regulatory, litigation, intellectual property, trade and tax services with respect to their investments and participation in the cannabis industry, all subject to the firm’s obligations under federal and state laws and bar licensure rules.

Our experience includes:

• Providing regulatory advice to companies making or considering strategic investments into the cannabis industry, including major food, beverage and agribusiness brands, healthcare and life sciences companies, private equity firms and family offices
• Advising professional services firms and financial institutions on their provision of services to the cannabis industry
• Helping a range of cannabis industry participants to navigate the legislative and regulatory complexities and risks associated with this relatively new market

We are committed to guiding our clients as a knowledgeable and innovative partner. We understand the complexities associated with evolving legislation and are dedicated to staying abreast of relevant industry and legal developments.

Our areas of focus

• Food, Beverage & Agribusiness
• Alcohol Industry
• Healthcare
• Life Sciences
• Private Equity
• Government & Lobbying Strategies

US Customs and Border Protection

US and international companies turn to our international trade team for a wide range of customs matters affecting the importation of alcoholic beverages, including country of origin and marking, tariff classification and dutability, valuation and pricing, drawback, bonded warehousing, and use of foreign trade zones. We advise on and represent clients before the CBP on issues involving port entry procedures, customs protests, binding ruling proceedings, and enforcement cases.