JUNE 4, 2025 – Michael Maher, a highly experienced business transactional attorney and advisor in the California wine and hospitality industry, has joined Davis Wright Tremaine LLP as a partner in San Francisco. Maher adds strength to the firm's top-of-market alcoholic beverage and corporate practice as well as its national team serving the food, beverage, and agriculture industry.
"Food + Beverage is one of DWT's preeminent national practice groups and has been a significant driver of growth across the firm and for our San Francisco office in particular," said Vidhya Prabhakaran, DWT's San Francisco partner-in-charge. "Michael is a terrific addition, a great fit for our culture, and he'll significantly expand our capacity to serve growing clients in Northern California, which continues to be a food and beverage innovation hub."
Maher was most recently a partner at Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass LLP, where he handled a number of important beverage industry transactions and served as principal outside counsel to companies with diverse commercial real estate, hospitality, and food and beverage interests. Before that, Maher spent 14 years in senior in-house counsel roles at some of California's leading family-owned wine businesses, including Jackson Family Wines, Trinchero Family Estates, and Domain H. William Harlan.
"Michael's thoughtful, client-first practice, built on trusted relationships, perfectly aligns with the No Dabblers approach our team brings to this work," said Jesse Lyon, DWT's nationwide co-chair for Food + Beverage and agriculture. "We look forward to leveraging his deep expertise, entrepreneurial energy, and practical, values-aligned service ethic, to help support the strategic goals of our clients."
DWT's Food + Beverage practice offers clients comprehensive legal services, serving as trusted industry advisors with a full range of support, including counseling on trademark, real estate, supply chain, labeling, regulatory issues, tax, business succession, employment law, food safety, and class action defense. The team and its individual attorneys have been widely recognized as nationwide leaders, including as the only firm in the United States to be ranked by Chambers USA Nationwide in both Food & Beverage categories: Regulatory & Litigation; and Alcohol.
The group has served as M&A counsel on a number of impactful transactions, including Treasury Wine Estates' $1 billion acquisition of Daou Vineyards and Oatly USA's sale of its manufacturing facilities and its strategic co-packing alliance with Ya YA Foods.
"Food + Beverage has been key to building DWT's national reputation in M&A and has been the foundation for growth of our corporate group in San Francisco," said Christina Chan, co-chair of DWT's business and transactions practice. "Building on the momentum from Jerry Ku's arrival last year, we're delighted to have Michael help further expand our corporate transaction capabilities in California and nationwide."
Said Maher: "DWT's passionate commitment to the Bay Area food and beverage industry, combined with its deep resources and national platform, present a compelling growth opportunity to serve clients. I'm excited to join the DWT team and to bring to clients the benefit of collaborative, creative, and comprehensive legal service with this deep bench of industry experts."
Maher is the sixth lateral partner to join DWT's San Francisco office in the past year.
About Davis Wright Tremaine
Davis Wright Tremaine LLP is an AmLaw 100 law firm with more than 600 lawyers representing clients based throughout the United States and around the world. Learn more at www.dwt.com.