Canadian Lawyer InHouse

35 CANADIANLAWYERMAG.COM/INHOUSE MAY/JUNE 2018 But while the challenges of a changing landscape around rules in employment law is one thing he has to track, his main focus right now is managing the company's fast- moving intellectual property. "My mandate in particular this year was to increase the size of our patent portfolio. It's super critical in our view, in part because we're maturing as a company and some of the things we're doing are part of becoming more mature company and we have more fi- nancial wherewithal to do that," he says. "I am actually at the stage where I have a consulting firm I'm using and we now have a weekly call about what we invented this week and what is the progress of the filing, etc.," he says. With a background in tech and IP, Shaer says he is probably "more realistic" about what he thinks will succeed in terms of pat- ents. "Do we do prior art searching and that kind of thing? Absolutely. I would rather file a good patent I have more confidence will hold up than a bunch that will die on the vine in the application phase just because they are obvious or when the entire industry has matured five- to 10- years down the road and there is the odd patent war. I've lived that on the tech side before," he says. Shaer knows if you have something good it could be worth a lot of money in the future. "Patenting a strain [of cannabis] is pretty challenging. There are some people doing it, but do I think it will hold up? I find it hard to believe, to be honest, because you can mix BY JENNIFER BROWN Managing GROWTH AND CHANGE in-house S ome days, it can be a challenge for in-house counsel to know where to focus their time, between managing changes to legislation on the labour and employment front in many provinces this year, anticipat- ing the introduction of legalized recreational cannabis and implications for the workplace, to juggling the growth of their own organizations. For Phil Shaer, between managing the personnel component of the growth of Canada's first publicly traded medical marijuana company, and tracking the company's growing patent portfolio, he has his hands full. As he manages both the general counsel and human resources role, he is seeing it all play out. "We have 750 jobs open right now — it won't shock me if we're 2,000 people this time next year. There were 200 people when I was hired two years ago," says Shaer who is chief legal officer responsible for legal and human resources at the company formerly known as Tweed Marijuana Inc., located just outside Ottawa in Smiths Falls, Ont. "We're moving so fast we're having weekly calls about what's going on. We're all focused on it amongst a host of other things."

• Cover