Here's how a 'beer guy' became the lawyer for the brewing industry

Brook Bristow is an attorney, but you won’t find him in a law office. He takes his new beverage law practice on the road, doing business in taprooms around the Upstate and elsewhere across South Carolina and into neighboring states.

He has worked with Greenville-area breweries like Swamp Rabbit and Brewery 85 and the new Birds Fly South, 13 Stripes and Fire Forge breweries, guiding them through the often complicated legal process of setting up shop. He also is the executive director of the South Carolina Brewers Guild, keeping watch on the state's fast-growing beer scene.

After years of work at Bradford Neal Martin & Associates in downtown Greenville, in January Bristow left to open his own practice, Bristow Beverage Law. He and his wife Chrissy (a TV meteorologist at WCBD in Charleston), moved to the coast and live on John’s Island.

But his Upstate ties remain strong. “I am in Greenville all the time,” he said. “I truly think of myself as a mobile law practice. I don’t keep an office. I don’t need one. I go to the brewers where they are. There is a lot of work that needs to be done.”

Bristow followed an unlikely path to law. Originally from Miami, he went to high school in Atlanta and enrolled at USC in Columbia where “most of my friends were poly-sci people set on going to law school,” he said. “There was no chance I was going to law school. I was going to do advertising and copy writing,” He also had an interest in cooking and went to a culinary school for a while.

But Bristow was interested in politics. He spent some time working at the Georgia state capital in Atlanta “and I ended up going to law school at Mercer University in Macon,” he said. After working in a Columbia law office, he made Greenville his home and his office "was just around the corner from Barley’s and the Greenville Beer Exchange," he said. “I discovered this whole new world (of craft beer) that was open to me. I thought that I might use my powers for good as a lawyer.”

He quickly became a force on the South Carolina beer scene by writing the state’s Pint Law, which allows breweries to sell up to 48 ounces of beer to consumers in a 24-hour period. Previously, breweries were limited to just offering 4-ounce samples.

He was also behind the Stone Bill, which allows breweries to get a food service permit and a retail permit and not have mandated limits on on-site consumption. Breweries also can have guest taps and also sell wine. For his work on those laws last year Bristow was given the prestigious F.X. Matt Defense of the Small Brewing Industry Award for supporting small independent brewers.

Deciding to become a beer and beverage lawyer, Bristow discovered there was no real place to learn his new trade.

“There is no book, there is no website where you learn how to do it,” he said. “Alcohol law is a combination of a lot of things. You have to know the laws that affect breweries. You have to learn it as experience.”

His first clients were Swamp Rabbit Brewery founder Ben Pierson and Brewery 85 founder Will McCammeron.

“You are constantly having to learn new things,” he said. “I didn’t know anyone else in South Carolina who did this. Now there are a great number of attorneys that I can talk with.”

His co-workers at Bradford Neal Martin were “incredibly supportive” as Bristow began honing in on beverage law. “They were always pushing me to do something that I enjoyed and find something that I was good at,” he said.

But he knew it was time to set out on his own.

“I had been kicking this around for a while,” he said. “I had been sitting around tables with people who were leaving their jobs to start new businesses in Greenville and I thought that was so impressive and I wished that could be me.”

He said he has 50-60 clients, most of them breweries, but a few restaurants, a winery, a cider-maker and “a couple of guys getting ready to start making mead.”

Most of his work is in South Carolina, but he also has a client in North Carolina and a couple in Georgia.

“There is no typical day, ever,” he said. “I think I know what I am doing (in a day) and then I get a call.” A lot of time goes into helping start-up breweries or alcohol-related businesses. There are trademark (issues), employment contracts. Once a business gets up and running, some of the issues are the same, but everyone has a different wrinkle, he said.

When he's not working with breweries on legal issues, Bristow likes to brew himself, but not as much as he used to. “The brewers have a lot nicer toys than I do. I have learned a lot from those guys.”

As a beer-drinker, he tends to favor IPAs and is fond of those produced by Asheville's Wicked Weed brewery.

Bristow and his wife are both fans of the great outdoors — “hiking, kayaking or just walking the dogs,” he said.

Lately, he’s been tending a sunflower garden at his home. And then it’s back to beer. “I like to tell people that I am not a lawyer who is into beer," he said. “I’m a beer guy who happens to be a lawyer.”