2025 Men of the Year: Joseph D. ‘Chip’ Sheppard III

Attorney Joseph D. “Chip” Sheppard III counts it as a point of pride to have contributed to two key changes to the Missouri Constitution.

Sheppard, who is vice president, shareholder and chair of the Cannabis Law Group for Carnahan Evans PC, led a successful campaign to adopt the Missouri Court Plan in Greene County in 2008. The effort halted what Sheppard called irrelevant and expensive campaigns by judges who are ethnically prohibited from making campaign promises. His Missouri Court Plan leadership earned him the Missouri Bar President’s Award for extraordinary service to the community.

More recently, Sheppard worked to legalize the medical use of cannabis in the state as a member of the New Approach Missouri board of directors. That campaign led to the passage of Amendment 2 in 2018, with 65.5% of Missouri voters favoring the legalization measure.

And in 2022, Sheppard served on the board of directors of the group that succeeded New Approach Missouri, Legal Missouri 2022, succeeding with the passage of Amendment 3, legalizing cannabis beyond medical use and expunging marijuana possession records for almost all convictions arising from possession of under 3 pounds of marijuana. When expungement is complete, Sheppard estimates some 300,000 people will have marijuana convictions removed from their records.

The efforts have had a major economic impact on the Show Me State, according to Sheppard.

“There are now more than 21,000 people directly employed in the cannabis industry in Missouri with thousands of additional ancillary employment positions,” Sheppard says, adding that Missouri is now the fifth-largest legal cannabis market in the United States.

“I am very proud of those efforts,” he says. “Cannabis/marijuana is now widely available as medicine and as an alternative to alcohol and dangerous Big Pharma and untested Chinese, Mexican and homegrown street drugs, to millions of Missourians.”

He adds that taxes on cannabis – an additional 6% additional tax on adult use in parts of Missouri, including Springfield and Greene County – brought extra revenue from over $1.3 billion in sales in 2024 alone.

“From 2024 sales alone, that resulted in over $13.7 million for Missouri veterans, an additional $7.2 million for legal assistance for low-income Missourians and over $7.2 million to operate a grant program benefitting drug addiction, treatment and overdose prevention,” he says, adding that law enforcement and the court system are no longer burdened by the arrest, prosecution and incarceration of people possessing marijuana.

Sheppard is chair of the Ozarks Technical Community College board and president of the Springfield Metropolitan Bar Association, and he is active in his church, First & Calvary Presbyterian, where he is heading up its Legacy Campaign for the long-term health of the church.

Family: 40th anniversary this summer to the love of my life, Silvia. Two wonderful grown children, Allie and Nick, and their spouses, Jimmy and Madi, with six grands and the seventh on the way this summer.

Words to live by: Pursue your loves/passions and give them your best. The greatest deepest joy comes from serving others.

Dream dinner party guest: Jesus.