Team size: 9

What are the most significant cases, projects or transactions that you and your legal team have recently been involved in?

My past year has been dominated by getting to know a new business (I joined CCBA in November 2024) and building a legal team almost from the ground up, as when I joined there were only two lawyers in the CCBA legal department. While this might not come across as nearly as cool as major litigation or transactions, it is challenging and hugely rewarding.

CCBA’s shareholders have concluded a transaction to sell 75% of the shares in CCBA to another Coca-Cola bottler, LSE-listed Coca-Cola HBC. It was a new experience to be in-house counsel for the target of M&A activity, as opposed to the buyer or seller!

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

Every crisis is unique, and there is no one-size-fits-all solve to doing my job in a crisis. I have found that key to a legal department’s resilience in a time of high stress or crisis is redundancy (having excess capacity in the team or having duplication of skillsets or practice areas – e.g. the ability to deploy excess resources to respond to a specific need). I also believe that maintaining high engagement or morale in the team helps significantly (the team is more willing to expend extraordinary effort, and more collaborative); and having established and good relationships with anchor external law firms.

As GC, ensuring that my fellow execs have trust in my ability as a lawyer and as a person is a big help. But that helps in every part of my job, not just during instability or crisis.

Looking forward, what trends do you foresee in the legal landscape over the next 5–10 years that companies should prepare for? 

I don’t share the view that in the next 5-10 years AI is going to obliterate the need for in-house lawyers. I am very confident that the role of good in-house lawyers makes them even more useful in a corporate setting, especially if they are able to master using AI in their work. AI may be more of a threat to [especially junior] lawyers in law firms, but as in-house counsel we own the last mile of delivery of legal services, and with it we hold the position of understanding and being aligned with the business and understanding law and legal risk. I think that this will make the roles of in-house counsel more resilient and will increase our worth/value over the next decade.