About

After graduating from Monash University, the majority of Anne Lock’s 22 years in legal practice have been in-house, firstly with energy giant ExxonMobil, then consulting in the Middle East before joining the global engineering and technology leader Bosch in Melbourne in 2013. Her earlier private practice experience covered criminal law advocacy and general practice. With an interest in the corporate world, her practice evolved to commercial litigation, leading to managing multi-party litigation files and advising on securities realisation in the dispute resolution group of King & Wood Mallesons.

Describing her time at Bosch, Lock finds that her relationships with Bosch’s clients to be the most rewarding. She says, ‘whilst elevation to leadership positions in expert practice areas such as litigation and competition law are both wonderful and encouraging, my highlights relate to the personal satisfaction of achieving breakthroughs [such as] attaining light-bulb moments for scientist clients in their understanding of the practical effects of complex law arising from difficult draft legislation’. She spends time with clients on legal education, through group training or one on one, in order to prevent issues from arising before they occur. She says that ‘this is infinitely more important, cheaper and less stressful for clients than a lawyer chipping away at solving problems after they have occurred.

This is particularly critical in the areas of competition and consumer law due to recent penalty increases and criminalisation risks’. Additionally, she has created a secondment for a junior lawyer to enter the business, and made structural improvements and trading changes in the business creating, as she describes, ‘mutually invaluable learnings and respect’. With her private practice litigation background, and as a member of the “litigation expert group”, Lock advises Bosch locally and globally on significant headline matters of international concern. Locally, alternative dispute resolution is important in her approach, with her record of infrequent trips to court achieving desired outcomes, including costs orders. Lock has handled various M&A transactions including tranches of investment in an award-winning agribusiness technology company developing and selling the latest analytics and sensor technology to revolutionise the agriculture and food industries, with the aim of helping farmers use data to achieve improved sustainable food production for the planet’s growing needs. Additionally, she has led the partnership negotiations with a leading Australian university to plan an “Ag-tec launch pad” which involves the licensing of Bosch land and the creation of a research collaboration in the areas of robotics, sensing technologies, artificial intelligence, automation and internet of things.