General Counsel Interview with Nicole Stanton
N
icole Stanton became the General Counsel of Trulieve Cannabis Corporation on October 1, 2021
when Trulieve acquired Harvest Health & Recreation Inc., where she’d served as Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary from July 2019 until the company was acquired. Her role at Harvest Health & Recreation included overseeing the legal department, the compliance program and providing legal advice on business strategy and the often-contradictory state regulatory frameworks around cannabis. Prior to joining Harvest, she was managing partner at the Phoenix office of Quarles & Brady LLP. She has taught legal ethics at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and is a member of the American Law Institute.
How does it feel to be general counsel of the country’s largest cannabis company? Like being general counsel of any other fast-growing company. The truth is that my responsibilities are the same as the prototypical general counsel. I deal with overseeing mergers and acquisitions, contracts, IP and litigation. The one big difference is that cannabis is one of the most uniquely regulated industries at the state level — a true patchwork of medical and recreational programs administered by different state agencies from state to state — and of course, cannabis is currently illegal federally, so our employees go to work each day knowing that what we do is not sanctioned by the federal government.
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