Moving in-house from private practice is a pretty standard career path for a GC. Making the move twice, from two different magic circle law firms though, is a bit more unusual.

But that is exactly what Lucozade Ribena Suntory GC Mary Guest (pictured) has done, punctuating time at Clifford Chance (CC) and Linklaters with six years at the Football Association, before joining the drinks company last year.

"My CV does not exactly follow a traditional route, but I have made my career decisions based on what feels right at the time and whether I think I will enjoy the role. So far I have been incredibly lucky," says Guest of her moves.

Guest has only been at Lucozade for around six months, after leaving her role as a managing associate at Linklaters in June last year.

She has inherited an eight-person legal team set up from scratch by her predecessor, Mollie Stoker, when the company was formed in 2014 through the sale of the Lucozade and Ribena brands by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to Japanese drinks giant Suntory for £1.35bn.

Guest started her career as a trainee at CC, spending nearly six years at the firm before her passion for football led her to take a role she "couldn't really turn down" at the FA.

Despite her love of the game, after going through two four-year cycles selling the organisation's broadcasting rights, she wanted a fresh challenge and returned to private practice in Linklaters' TMT team in October 2015, following a year of postgraduate study.

"If I am really honest, I was a bit unsure of going back into private practice because I had been out of it for seven years by that point," she says. "But often we can draw these really distinct differences between private practice and in-house legal work, when actually it is a bit more fluid.

"There are a lot of interchangeable skills and, for Linklaters, one of the things that I could bring was that I understood the client side of things. I understood what you need as an in-house lawyer that maybe if you were always in private practice you don't really understand."

One of the things that frustrated me in private practice is that you are an integral part of something and then it finishes and you don't hear about it again

By last year though, as Stoker sought a replacement ahead of her move to a new role as business development director at parent company Suntory Beverage and Food Europe, Guest had realised she preferred being in-house and jumped at the chance of returning.

She was particularly attracted by being able to use some of her sporting experience within Lucozade Sports' sponsorship deals, such as its relationship with heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua.

"I prefer being an in-house lawyer because I really enjoy the element of being across the wider business and having a proper role within an organisation on an ongoing basis. One of the things that has frustrated me in private practice is that you are an integral part of something and then it finishes and you don't hear about it again."

At Lucozade Ribena Suntory, she ensures her team are actively involved in the wider business, rather than siloed away.

Discussing the structure, she says: "Because I am on the board and the executive committee and because members of our team are well known around the organisation, we can bring real value to the organisation on a number of different touchpoints. This empowers us in a way to be able to provide the support which is actually needed."

Outside counsel is an expensive resource and in a bid to better control costs and understand spending, Stoker assigned each member of the legal team a relationship with a different law firm adviser. That person is then responsible for overseeing spending with the firm and sitting down with Guest and the finance team to make sure they are on track.

"If the whole team are involved in the external legal budget and it is a group responsibility, then there is a true buy-in to what you want achieve and targets will hopefully be hit," says Guest.

She has not yet set up a formal legal panel but the company regularly uses Clifford Chance, Foot Anstey, K&L Gates, Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, Stephenson Harwood, Mishcon de Reya and Addleshaw Goddard.

Guest says she may look at formalising the relationships later this year.

"There are a number of benefits to having a panel, in terms of support, fees, secondments and things like that, but how we manage to get those things and if we create a formal panel or if we just try and firm things up with the current firms we use, I am not clear on yet."

Getting the most out of the external advisers is not the only thing on her to-do list for this year. Aside from traversing the problems every company is facing with GDPR, the company is embarking on a health and wellness initiative. This programme sees the company pledge to remove 50% of the sugar from its range of drinks and make a £30m investment to try to get the public exercising and moving more, as well as encouraging its own employees to do the same.

"I am keen for the legal team to support the wellbeing initiative the wider organisation is undertaking. I think next year will be really interesting in terms of taking a step back and having a health check of the department itself and looking at how legal works within the wider organisation."