David H. Cole

David H. Cole is a seasoned business attorney and the managing partner of Coon & Cole. For more than 25 years, David has represented Maryland businesses and investors in a wide variety of commercial transactions and disputes. He also maintains a robust estate planning, including drafting and administering complex wills and trusts.

David devotes a large part of his practice to business organization and transactional matters. He has helped to structure countless business entities and counsels entrepreneurs as they work to get their businesses off the ground, coordinating with their other professionals to set up each business to be durable yet flexible, for the long term. He has crafted agreements to address many unique circumstances his clients have faced, and he serves as corporate counsel and a resource to his clients as they make day-to-day business decisions.

David has extensive experience in commercial real estate matters, including acquisitions and sales, development, construction, leases, financing and foreclosure. He handles large and small deals, ranging from retail shopping centers to stand-alone, mixed-use and multi-family projects, office buildings, residential subdivisions and bare land acquisitions and development. He assists clients in negotiation of purchase and sale agreements, due diligence, easements and declarations and like-kind exchanges. He is well versed in commercial leases, including retail, office and industrial leases, and handles landlord-tenant negotiations, lease term issues and dispute resolution, including litigation. He also represents parties, including lenders, with respect to real estate financing issues.

In his estate planning practice, David helps his clients identify their specific and overarching goals and distill them into an organized structure. He is adept at integrating clients’ disposition wishes with their wealth preservation and asset protection needs. He regularly prepares complex wills and trusts, revocable and irrevocable, for a variety of situations, including trusts designed for estate-freezing and tax-savings purposes, such as grantor-retained annuity trusts (“GRATs”), qualified personal residence trusts (“QPRTs”), trusts that help protect and preserve a client’s wealth, including on-shore and offshore asset protection trusts, and trusts designed to protect individuals with special needs. He serves as counsel to fiduciaries, including as counsel to personal representatives (administering probate estates in the Orphans’ Court), attorneys-in-fact (administering financial power of attorney designations) and trustees. In addition to serving as counsel, he also serves as trustee of several trusts and has first-hand knowledge of the day-to-day issues trustees face. In the legal community, David is the Vice-Chair of the Estates & Trusts Committee of the Baltimore County Bar Association.

In the years since Maryland has legalized medical cannabis, David has represented companies and investors alike establishing themselves in the industry, and has worked diligently to stay on top of legislative and policy changes in this emerging legal area. He has prepared numerous applications for dispensary, processer and grower licenses, including assisting clients with corporate structuring and agreements, commercial leasing, investor issues, security, compliance, and is skilled at coordinating with clients’ professionals, including consultants and health professionals. He serves as counsel to dispensary, processer and grower businesses in their day-to-day operations. He has also represented clients in litigation and dispute resolution respecting medical cannabis licensing issues.