About

Editor’s note: This interview was conducted prior to March 2020.

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last two years?

As a leading LP in a brand-new sector, Aurora has grown rapidly, from 250 employees two years ago to more than 3,300 today. That growth has come partly through strategic acquisitions. Two years ago, we bought Pedanios, a German cannabis distribution company, in a deal that that was our first international acquisition and opened up Europe to us. In 2018, we acquired CanniMed, Canada’s original medical cannabis producer out of Saskatoon, as well as the Ontario-based MedReLeaf, an established high-quality cannabis producer. Both were billion-dollar deals. Last year we acquired Whistler, a premium organic cannabis grower in British Columbia, to round out the top end of our brand portfolio in Canada.

How do you feel in-house legal leaders can successfully introduce and implement a culture within a legal department?

We must be the “how” department and enable and assist our colleagues in achieving their objectives. We aren’t the “no” department. The company needs to know that and everyone in the department is asked to operate with that mindset. We work in a company built with an aggressive entrepreneurial spirit, and when that’s combined with creating a new industry in real time, it results in a very exciting work environment. We don’t ever want people within our company to view consulting with the legal department as a roadblock. We want people to seek out our advice and value it. I also believe in ensuring everyone has an area of work to own so that we aren’t competing. There’s always enough work to go around and it is all interesting and meaningful work.

If you had to give advice to an aspiring in-house lawyer or general counsel what would it be and why?

Working in an exciting new field like cannabis requires skill, effort and the ability to pivot constantly. The risk of going in-house too soon in your career is that you may not know what you don’t know, because you haven’t been involved in a wide enough variety of legal situations. In my role, many of my decisions are guided based on moving targets and rapidly developing markets and the legislation that goes along with those circumstances. So ensure that you gain real experience, with at least a few years of private practice so that you’re best able to make decisions in situations that are sometimes imperfect. And don’t assume in-house is easier.

What techniques do you use to provide commercially-focused advice to your company, and how do you communicate these to more junior lawyers in the team?

My main technique is to be curious. Curiosity is a core skill for an in-house lawyer. When colleagues make queries, I try to find out what they are doing that’s driving the request. They might be asking for a legal agreement ASAP, but when you drill down into the request, the root issue may be something different than what was initially presented. I think we have to find out what problem they are actually trying to solve. You can bring real value to the business in that way.

For newer staff, I encourage them to learn as much as they can about the company and their colleagues. Go to the facilities and see the spaces. Take calls and talk to people. We’re based in many locations all over the world, so when you have the chance to meet face to face, I encourage our lawyers to do it, in order to better get to know everyone’s roles and what they are trying to achieve. It all helps you find out what’s important to the company overall and to each specific department. And it helps you become a strategic partner driving towards those achievements.

FOCUS ON: A BRAND NEW INDUSTRY

A whole new world: Developing a new industry in real time.

Working in a brand-new sector like cannabis presents unique challenges for lawyers because often the law hasn’t been court-challenged, applied or fully interpreted when we’re asked for advice. But we remain the experts, as our role is to use our understanding of the law to guide sound business decisions. To do that well, we need to truly understand the law as written, and understand the purposes driving it, and then interpret how the law can work in tandem with the goals of our business. We contribute most meaningfully when we can synchronise all of those elements.

In Canada, when interpreting applicable cannabis legislation, we often assess comparable industries. Some of the written law that applies to cannabis comes from the Tobacco Act, for instance. But not all of it. And being cognizant of the differences between the acts is crucial, because the differences suggest the legislation was written to be different on purpose. We need to understand why that is, what was kept in, what was left out. We frequently see themes of product safety, access to safe and tested cannabis and safeguarding children as the most prevalent themes in Canadian cannabis law and need to recognise those themes when interpreting legislation.

As the global leader in this industry, Canadian companies and their advisors are in the fortunate position to influence the law in countries around the world based on Canada’s successes and challenges with its legal medical and non-medical cannabis systems. To be able to successfully do this in such a nascent and highly-regulated industry, it is important to recognise one of our core relationships is the government regulator in each country that we operate in – a group connected to those who made the law and those who apply it. When you appreciate that the goals of the regulator are often recurring themes in legislation, it is much easier to interpret and advise on new legislation.

It’s always important to remember when we make decisions that we all want the same thing: A healthy, functioning, effective industry. As legal counsel, we should always strive to see the whole picture, even when it isn’t fully developed. There’s a logic behind what lawmakers and regulators are doing. There’s a logic behind how the cannabis business is being built on the industry side. As lawyers, we succeed when we help drive those elements together.