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Top Boston liquor lawyer fired for allegedly falsifying a license

The former general counsel of the Boston Licensing Board was terminated by her law firm for allegedly giving a client a bogus permit.

A top Boston liquor license lawyer was fired recently for allegedly giving a client a false license.Barry Chin/Globe Staff

A top liquor license lawyer who formerly served as the general counsel of the Boston Licensing Board was recently fired by her firm for allegedly falsifying a liquor license for an Allston-Brighton food hall.

Lesley Hawkins was terminated by Boston law firm Prince Lobel several weeks ago after a client alleged that the liquor license she arranged for them was invalid, said Tom Elcock, a partner at Prince Lobel and the firm’s in-house counsel. The decision to fire Hawkins followed an internal investigation.

“We believe the client had no involvement or no knowledge of anything that was allegedly done by our former partner,” said Elcock, adding that “we have seen no evidence that any other client has been affected.”

Earlier this year, Hawkins allegedly obtained a liquor license with a fake serial number for Craft Food Halls, Boston Magazine first reported. The food hall later used the license to purchase liquor from a wholesaler, but was unsuccessful, because of the made-up number.

Hawkins declined to comment on advice of legal counsel.

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The Allston location, attached to a hotel on Soldiers Field Road, was the company’s tenth outpost in Massachusetts. But it was shuttered two weeks after its opening in March due to the license debacle, and the storefront is not listed on Craft Food Halls’ website. No one answered a phone call there Thursday evening.

It was not immediately clear if any money had changed hands in transferring the license, which restaurants sometimes sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission said Thursday that the issue came to its attention in early May and that the commission worked in “collaboration with Boston’s Licensing Board and Police Department” and “handed all evidence over to the City of Boston.”

A spokeswoman for Mayor Michelle Wu said the city addressed the matter quickly. A Boston police investigation remains active.

“As soon as the city was made aware of these disturbing allegations, the invalid license was seized,” according to the statement. “The city is grateful to those who swiftly raised these concerning actions.”

Hawkins worked in the Walsh administration, serving as the Licensing Board’s general counsel for nearly five years before departing in 2021 and joining Prince Lobel.

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Her tenure in the firm’s real estate division began after a nearly ten-year stint “in licensing, permitting, and zoning law with a concentration on cannabis and alcoholic beverage licensing and commercial and residential development,” according to the firm’s website. She was well-regarded within the small community of liquor license attorneys in Boston, who oversee the high-value transactions of alcohol permits that can sell for as much as $600,000.

Hawkins’ termination at Prince Lobel represents one of the more high-profile incidents in the industry since State Senator Dianne Wilkerson accepted $23,500 in bribes for a business to obtain a liquor license in 2008. She was later caught stuffing cash in her bra by an undercover FBI agent and was sentenced to 3 ½ years in federal prison for attempted extortion, and served 30 months.

The episode comes as the Legislature is considering a measure — at the City of Boston’s behest — that would add more than 200 liquor licenses across the city, which has long had a state-mandated cap on how many restaurants and bars are allowed to sell alcohol.


Shirley Leung is a Business columnist. She can be reached at shirley.leung@globe.com. Diti Kohli can be reached at diti.kohli@globe.com. Follow her @ditikohli_.