The cannabis industry is blazing.

Adult recreational cannabis has hit the shelves in California and Canada, on top of already legalized dispensaries in Colorado, Washington and Oregon. In the midterms, voters in Michigan provided another win for recreational use.

But that doesn't mean legal issues in the space are going away. While recreational cannabis is legal (to gift) in the U.S. capital, it's still illegal on a federal level. And in January 2018, then U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions lifted an Obama-era policy that prevented federal authorities from cracking down on marijuana sales in states with legalized weed—a bad sign for the industry.

A burgeoning market with the potential for billions in revenue combined with competing federal and state laws over the growth, sale and use of cannabis has created legal uncertainty with high stakes—a recipe for an interesting, and challenging, in-house role.

“Anybody that has the misconception that this kind of in-house position is a 9 to 5 position is severely mistaken,” says Chris Fotopoulos, chief legal officer of Verano Holdings, a Chicago-based cannabis industry company that's on its way to going public, and expanding within the U.S.

Verano is one of many cannabis companies that hired in-house counsel as the industry blossomed. Fotopoulos began working with medical marijuana cultivator Ataraxia, which later became part of Verano, as outside counsel during his time as an associate at Brotschul Potts, helping the company apply for a license to cultivate cannabis in the state of Illinois.

After that, Verano began seeking licenses in other states. As Verano began to grow and ­discuss going public, its legal needs demanded a ­full-time focus. Fotopoulos was brought on board as the company's first chief legal officer.

Many of the still small group of in-house cannabis lawyers got their start in the industry in a similar way.

Joseph Segilia, the general counsel of Terra Tech Corp., worked as outside counsel for the Irvine, California-based company before moving in-house as its first legal leader in 2016. He was a partner at Robinson Brog Leinwand Greene Genovese & Gluck when he began his outside counsel work for Terra Tech.

“I worked for Terra Tech before they hired me. That's how I met the company, by representing them at my previous law firm. I've run into other people who have done the same thing. … That tends to be the most common,” Segilia says.

But it's not the only way lawyers have moved to a corporate counsel role in the cannabis industry. Others have switched into in-house roles with little to no cannabis law experience, bringing skills from other industries instead.

Vertical Companies' in-house corporate counsel Elyse Kaplan joined the Agoura Hills, California-based company, which cultivates and distributes cannabis and related products, in May 2018. It's her first time in a corporate counsel role, coming to Vertical after more than a year with the Immigration Law Offices of Hadley Bajramovic.

The fast pace and constant change of immigration laws helped prepare her for her current role, she says, despite the differences between the areas. “The adaptability, because both are very [much] in constant change, and both are very, I think, political,” she says. “And so being able to kind of navigate such a politically charged field has really helped me.”

It also gave her the communication skills needed to deal with regulators and build strong relationships with people outside the ­organization.

Andrea Ambrose Lobato, the head of legal and compliance at San Francisco-based Eaze, also came to cannabis from another highly ­regulated industry. Prior to her current role at Eaze, a tech startup that allows users to get cannabis delivered from local dispensaries and drivers, she was in the complicated, fast-paced ridesharing industry.

Lobato spent more than three years at Lyft Inc., first as policy counsel and then director of regulatory compliance. When she started at Lyft in 2014 there were few ridesharing-specific regulations in place.

“I was able to kind of grow with the industry and help shape those regulations and implement those regulations at Lyft on a national basis,” Lobato says. “And I think there are a lot of ­similarities and a lot of differences between these two experiences, but I do think that being in an industry that is kind of watching the laws unfold as we're building the business, is like being on a rocketship and building the rocketship at the same time. And that experience, I think, really prepared me for the accelerated ride that is cannabis.”

Lobato moved to Eaze in November 2017, when the company began to build out most of its legal team. The legalization of recreational cannabis sale in California was on the horizon, and she says Eaze was looking to hire in-house lawyers who could focus on the coming regulatory changes.

For many in-house cannabis lawyers, dealing with changing and challenging regulations around advertising, distribution and other aspects of the business has been the main focus. For others, mergers and acquisitions, plans to go public or real estate deals have drawn a large amount of legal time.

Legal recruiter Gigi Birchfield, the managing partner of Major, Lindsey & Africa's Los Angeles office and co-global practice leader for its in-house practice group, says she's seen a demand for cannabis industry in-house lawyers who have experience with regulators—from any U.S. agency—as well as lawyers who have worked with consumers.

“It is a consumer product,” Birchfield says, adding that lawyers with experience even in ­non-regulated industries selling products have skills that could translate well to the cannabis space.

Lobato says that, from her experience at Eaze, lawyers with experience as in-house or outside counsel at companies in regulated industries is a critical factor in hires. “Given how quickly this industry is developing, there aren't a lot of people out there who have extensive legal cannabis experience, so that's really not a requirement at all,” she says. “Ideal candidates would have been in other developing regulatory spaces and would have [a] regulatory background working with business stakeholders on those developing regulations.”

For Segilia and Fotopoulos, one standout factor for in-house candidates would be a knowledge of mergers and acquisitions, as a growing number of deals take place in the cannabis industry. Terra Tech is public, and Segilia says much of his time is currently spent on reporting requirements. As more companies go public, as Fotopoulos' plans to do, Segilia hypothesizes that more will take on in-house teams who can sift through the legal legwork to make it happen.

While Segilia is currently the only in-house lawyer at Terra Tech, he says that the company has debated adding another hire. At the moment, he says, that role would likely be for a generalist who could help the company on a number of legal needs.

“I think when companies start to get to a certain size … probably, within a year or two for some of the larger companies, it will make sense to start building out legal departments with maybe a real estate person, an intellectual property person, and employment person—sort of reflecting an in-house legal department at any midsize company,” Segilia says.

It's not uncommon for cannabis companies to have a legal team on the smaller side. But some have expanded beyond one or two lawyers. As of October 2018, Eaze's legal team had six people who work on general legal matters but also have their own specialized areas, according to Lobato.

Jasmine Roberts, senior counsel at Irvine, California-based Weedmaps, says her legal team has evolved to the point where in-house roles are specialized. Her main role is as corporate counsel, focusing on business-related legal affairs, corporate governance and contracts, while others on the team focus on compliance or regulations.

Prior to her role at Weedmaps, a platform that allows users to find cannabis dispensaries near them, Roberts was a corporate associate at Munger, Tolles & Olson, developing experience in M&A and corporate matters. She says her previous experience with tax law has also been useful.

While the team still occasionally overlaps, the generalized nature of responsibilities for in-house lawyers she found when joining Weedmaps in March 2017 has been changed to more specific roles. “As we grew, it shifted from being a need for bodies to a need for expertise,” Roberts says.

There are companies on the other end of the in-house development spectrum. For smaller-sized players in the cannabis industry, or those not ready for a full in-house team, outside counsel have sometimes taken the general counsel role.

Nicole Howell Neubert, a partner and founder of women-owned cannabis business and regulatory firm Clark Neubert, serves as the outside counsel for a number of cannabis industry companies. She has been practicing cannabis law for five years.

Many clients she's worked with are seeking counsel who can help on a number of issues, and have general experience. They're also looking for guidance on what comes next in an uncertain industry. That's where having deep experience in cannabis law is crucial, she says.

“Having that context is just particularly helpful because it orients the [client] because there's so much ambiguity still,” Howell Neubert says. “There's still a lot of gray and a lot of, 'What are the regulators going to do about this?' And I think having that longer view, you have a little bit better sense of what the main concerns are and where things are probably headed. Crystal balls don't work very well right now, but I think it helps to have that background and that experience, of before things were regulated.”