She is a regulatory lawyer at an international firm, and she had to argue cannabis into it as her own practice. Now she hosts the firm's cannabis podcast on company time.
Larissa Mößmer works four days a week. The day she does not work is Monday.
"In Berlin it's wise to have the Monday off after the weekend."
She says it plainly, the way you state a fact about the climate. She loves music. She loves art. She goes dancing a lot.
The other four days she is a regulatory lawyer at Osborne Clarke, in the Berlin office, advising companies on cannabis law.
She did not arrive at cannabis. It arrived at her, early, and she recognised it before her firm did.
"I'm a lawyer since almost six years, and I would say in my first year I had the first medical cannabis clients."
This was well before Germany legalised recreational use. Medical cannabis was already legal, and the clients came from elsewhere.
"I had some clients from Israel, from Canada, and I was like, oh, this is interesting. This is a nice niche."
The work fitted what she already knew. She had come from life sciences.
"Most of the things that you do there, like pharmaceutical law, health advertising law and all of that stuff, it also applies to medical cannabis. It's a pharmaceutical like other pharmaceuticals as well. So I could already use all the knowledge that I had."
What differed was who was on the other end of the phone.
"I would say traditional pharma is maybe more a lot of like Old Man, and cannabis was just young drive startups. Just something new. Just an industry that really was shaping, and it was nice to be part of this process."
The obstacle was not the law. It was her own firm.
"One challenge in the beginning was convincing a traditional law firm that this is going to be my business case. Because it's not like a typical thing that big law firms do. And building my own niche."
She won that argument.
"But now I get a lot of support. They really let me do my thing."
She is co-head of the firm's German cannabis group.
The podcast came out of a gap she noticed after legalisation.
"There's so much demand for legal opinion on the new law, but not everybody can afford a lawyer. And most of the format where you get information is in article, so written. But there wasn't really a format that — I'm a big podcast fan, and I just get all my information when I clean my apartment or whatever, I just get it all in my headphones."
She knew what would sink it.
"If I just talk about regulatory law in Germany, nobody will listen to it, because it's a bit boring."
So every episode has a guest from the industry. Chief executives of German companies. Someone from the United States explaining what Germany might learn from that market. She sets out the legal framework, then hands over.
It is made for the firm, and recorded during working hours.
"So that's nice. It's not something I have to do on top. That would be a bit much."
Ask her about a typical day and she disposes of the version you might be imagining.
"It's not like — excuse — I don't work in the my high heels and save the world every day."
The real answer is quieter.
"It's a lot of consulting, and like, my day, I would say it's a lot of many phone calls, but also many nice in-person meetings with clients here in Berlin."
She does regulatory work rather than litigation. She is not often in court.
On the German market she is precise about where the difficulty actually sits, and it is not in Berlin.
"The regulatory system is so different from state to state in Germany that it's really hard sometimes to advise businesses. Because one state is much stricter, let's say Bavaria, than other states in certain regards."
There is a second problem, on the medical side.
"Maybe some players overstretching legal boundaries a bit."
She wants two things from policy. Neither is dramatic.
"We really need model projects. We need supply chains for recreational cannabis."
The reasoning is about where people go if the legal route stays closed.
"We have a big shift for recreational users going to the medical market. And now politics of shooting against that. But if you shoot against that, you need to open — we can't send the people back to the illicit market."
The thing she returns to twice, unprompted, is not a rule. It is a silence.
"Advertising in Germany is so restricted for cannabis, and the line between information and advertising is so thin that a lot of companies simply, they're so afraid of doing something wrong that there's too little information that is needed to really be an informed consumer."
She is describing a market where the people who know the most are the least able to say it. It is also, precisely, the gap her podcast sits in.
"That's also something I want to do with a podcast. Like, provide information. Just open the discussion openly about cannabis."
She has been a cannabis user, though she is careful about the category.
"I mean, I was a cannabis user before, but I would say, like a recreational user."
What changed was not the habit. It was what she knew.
"Now I have so much more knowledge and wisdom about terpenes and all of that, and I have so much respect about plant medicine, about the plant itself. Like how many different strains you have."
Then, twice in one breath, the only word she reaches for.
"It's incredible. Like the use of cannabis in medicine or like THC, CBD. If you learn about all of that, like there's this plant has so much to offer and it's just incredible. Like incredible."
She was asked what she likes most about the work, and she answered about the chaos.
"There's always a little bit of chaos. But I mean, everybody in the cannabis market knows that it's just a new market."
Then she said what the chaos is made of.
"There are so many young companies and startups that have so much drive and ideas. And yeah, I really enjoy that. I really love and really enjoy working with them."
Video portrait coming soon / EN edition