The article is entitled
Excavating The Hyperlocal Legal Landscape With Amanda Ostrowitz Of CannaRegs
COVID-19 threw law firms and librarians into the deep end of the local law pool. COVID-19 exposed the limits of traditional legal information vendors who focus on laws at the federal and state level. Long before COVID-19 emerged, Amanda Ostrowitz the SVP and founder of Fyllo’s CannaRegs, recognized the need for hyperlocal law to track the emergence of the Canna CBD Industry. Ostrowitz herself has developed a mastery of canna law and the canna law market.
Like other attorney entrepreneurs Ostrowitz sat at her desk thinking — “there’s got to be a better way.” Ostrowitz was working at the Federal Reserve and had to research financial regulations related to the emerging cannabis industry. There were no standard tools for locating the materials related to canna. As she excavated the regulations she discovered that she was in terra incognita — the unmapped and unharnessed regions of hyperlocal law related to regulation of the cannabis industry. By June 2015, CannaRegs was ready for a soft launch. The company was purchased by Fyllo in March 2021.
Cannabis law was not immediately embraced by the ALM 100 law firms. Ostrowitz tracked the progression. In 2018, only 15% of ALM law firm websites mentioned cannabis/CBD law and 5% had a specialty canna practice. By 2019, those numbers jumped to 35% of ALM 100 firms mentioning cannabis/CBD law and 10% having a special practice group. In 2020, 75% of ALM 100 law firm websites mentioned cannabis/CBD law and 30% had a specialty practice. Even firms that didn’t promote their canna practices had to respond to client canna questions.
Ostrowitz believes that the expansion of canna/CBD law practice in many firms was driven by the Fortune 500. Clients in industries as diverse as finance, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and real estate started demanding answers that required access to the hyperlocal insights that canna law is designed to capture.
But for other organizations, tracking cannabis law is not a side hustle, it is their bread and butter. There are specialty law firms, investors, government agencies, lobbyists, consulting firms, and advocacy organizations who rely on CannaRegs to track the regulatory landscape.
Read the rest at https://abovethelaw.com/2021/04/excavating-the-hyperlocal-legal-landscape-with-amanda-ostrowitz-of-cannaregs/
