California’s regulatory environment is among the most demanding in the country. For California businesses subject to state and federal oversight, including agriculture, manufacturing, technology, and professional services, regulatory scrutiny is a recurring feature of doing business. The question is whether your counsel understands how agencies operate and knows how to push back effectively when they overreach.

Reading a statute or a court case is the easy part. Knowing what to do with it in your specific situation, in front of this particular agency, and at this particular moment requires something that cannot be looked up. It requires having been on the inside: understanding how enforcement priorities get set, how cases get built, where agencies have real leverage and where they are exposed. Columbo Deol LLP has that experience, with one founding partner having served as both a prosecutor and an enforcement attorney at a federal regulatory agency in between years of private practice.

What We Do

We represent California businesses across industries regarding regulatory requirements, agency obstruction in licensing, permitting, or grants, government contract compliance, municipal exactions, and industry-specific oversight. We also challenge the legality of regulatory regimes that exceed constitutional bounds or their statutory mandate, or their application to our client's particular circumstances.

  • Advising on regulatory compliance and agency interactions before problems arise
  • Challenging unlawful rules, agency overreach, and unconstitutional government action
  • Pressing agencies on public records, conflicts of interest, and procedural violations
  • Impact litigation that establishes precedent benefiting entire industries

What Sets Us Apart

Responding to a regulatory enforcement action requires judgment. We have been in the rooms where these decisions get made. We understand the structural constraints that limit agency authority, including transparency obligations, conflict-of-interest rules, the constitutional and statutory limits on what regulators can do. To us, these are not merely legal abstractions, but practical pressure points we have used or defended against. Whether we are compelling an agency to disclose records it would prefer to withhold, challenging a decision tainted by a conflict of interest, arguing that a regulator has exceeded its legislative mandate, or charging that a legislative mandate is unconstitutional, we know where the leverage is.

We also understand that a regulatory matter is never just a legal matter. It consumes management attention, delays decisions, and creates uncertainty that touches every part of the business. We work to resolve that uncertainty as directly and efficiently as the matter allows so that you can get back to running your business.