In the Media
DEA’s Marijuana Rescheduling Plan Has Law Firms High on Expanding Relationships With Cannabis Clients
Read Time: 2 minsCannabis industry team co-chair Heidi Urness was interviewed by Law.com on the rescheduling of cannabis in a May 2, 2024 article “DEA’s Marijuana Rescheduling Plan Has Law Firms High on Expanding Relationships With Cannabis Clients.”
“It starts with a local attorney who knows the local regulations really well and who understands how taxes work in the state,” said Urness, who joined McGlinchey Stafford in 2022 to start the cannabis practice after practicing at her own firm. “Eventually the attorney says, ‘Ok, we have people handling these licenses. Now we need real estate services and financing services. Other states open up [for legal cannabis] and you want to help people there.”
But Urness said the scope of practitioners specializing in cannabis is narrow in Big Law despite the widespread use of the term “full-service.”
“There are only 10 to 20 folks throughout the country really doing this, and as we grew, we started consolidating,” Urness said. “We need the resources of a bigger firm; we need geographic reach within the firm but we also need to be a specialized practice group because I can’t do it all.”
A less successful approach some firms have taken, Urness said, is when their top corporate lawyers attempt to apply their skills to a new industry with specific challenges.
“Getting into a situation where your case can get removed to federal court, that’s a no-brainer to us cannabis attorneys but not for corporate attorneys,” Urness said. “Firms are grabbing up smaller experts and giving them their firm’s resources and saying, ‘Here you go.”
McGlinchey Stafford has worked to spread the institutional knowledge of cannabis to other practice areas to be prepared for clients’ expanded needs, beginning with education initiatives to distinguish between cannabis and hemp, Urness said. After this elementary stage, she said the firm has worked with attorneys to apply an understanding of cannabis to their practice.