Lara L. DeCaro

Lara DeCaro is an experienced mediator, arbitrator, and attorney with a concentration in highly regulated businesses and emerging technologies such as biotech, alcohol, cannabis, and influencers. For many clients, she is essentially outside counsel, working mostly on M&A, compliance, licensing, HR, and IP. Ms. DeCaro prides herself on representing her clients from start up to wind up, and everything in between, and on the fact that her clients say they feel better after talking with her.

Ms. DeCaro graduated from the University of Southern California with a double BS in Education & English as a Dean’s List Scholar. She then spent two ski seasons waiting tables and working on the mountain back in Taos, NM, where she had spent much of her childhood, before heading off to Tulane Law School where she earned her J.D. in International Environmental Policy, Magna Cum Laud, and a Certificate in Mediation.

A few of Ms. DeCaro’s achievements include: • Drafting the SAFE template for cannabis-specific transactions in connection with Y-Combinator approval and representatives. • Speaking, upon formal invitation, to sitting members of Irish Parliament in public hearing at Leinster House. • Changing law in Colorado regarding under-insured motorist coverage through brief authored, submitted, and argued in front of the Colorado Supreme Court. • Co-founding a non-profit specialty lawyer association and growing it to over 800 members world-wide. • Starting a pro bono legal services program for social equity applicants, implemented by San Francisco and Marin Counties, which program has also been the model for multiple similar programs initiated state-wide.