General counsel | L’Oréal Australia and New Zealand
Anna Lozynski
General counsel | L’Oréal Australia and New Zealand
General counsel | L’Oréal Australia and New Zealand
In 2012, at 31 years of age, Anna Lozynski was appointed as an executive level greenfield general counsel to establish the legal function for the Australian and New Zealand wholly...
Being legally innovative is a daily attitude and a practice. It means adopting a progressive mindset. It means being focused on the efficiency of a legal function and running it like a business, as a matter of strategic priority. It means making consistent effort to raise one’s innovation intelligence (what I call IQ2.0) via networking, and the creation of synergies over silos. It means understanding one’s role in the legal ecosystem – how one can inspire others to “do law” differently – our law firms, business and legal colleagues, legal tech vendors and law schools.
I believe a high degree of consciousness in respect of gender issues and all other aspects of diversity is critical for any organisation, especially in today’s complex business and social worlds. Unfortunately, studies show that pockets of the legal profession are lagging on this front.
Firstly, we as women need to feel empowered to manage our own careers to the maximum extent possible: if you want a leadership position or a lateral move, make it known. Learn to step into your power to have a conversation about your value. Make your own path, including dealing with and learning from the obstacles along the way. I know this can be tricky, but it is not impossible.
Be tactical about collecting experiences, tackle the project that no one else wants to take, build a strong profile and have great working relationships across and up the food chain. Seek out formal training, stay relevant, and ensure you have a strong external network to complement your internal one.
In addition, women are often over-mentored and under-sponsored in an organisation. And sponsorship is often critical to having a successful career anywhere. Find a sponsor if you don’t have one or be an active sponsor, by putting your team members forward for projects discussed in and outside of the board room.
Regardless of your position, in the workplace we all need to be the change we want to see – so be bold enough to call out behaviour that compromises gender equality.
When I first started in this role, I was a one woman show. I am grateful to now have a small yet high performing team, more than I can truly express in words.
Our data confirms that our legal function is spending more than half of its time on medium to high-risk matters, so the mission has been partly accomplished, but we want to reduce the volume of low risk matters even further into 2020. To do that, we have several new apps in the pipeline to complement the 14 self-service legal apps the business already enjoys. We are also looking to experiment with contract review software as well as legal intake software. If there is a better way to solve incoming legal problems, we are onto it!
Legal education and training is one of four strategic pillars for our team. To that end, we run anywhere from 30-40 legal training sessions annually to help raise the legal competency of the business, including how to optimise our legal tech tools. We support flexible working, which helps enormously with the constant juggle of being an in-house lawyer in a demanding workplace environment – my whole team works flexibly including me.
Personally, I’m known for maximising every minute. I am fiercely organised and well planned in respect of matters within my control. I have also learned to make choices as to where and how I direct my energy. Regular meditation, clean eating, yoga and exercise helps me have a clear mind in an “always on” high energy working environment. When it feels like it’s all too much at any point, I remind myself of what it is I’m grateful about my job, my life and my side hustle.
In-house lawyers today need to be more adaptable and agile than ever. This means staying closer than ever to the goings on of the business, and then vis-à-vis the legislative landscape.
We also need to be perceived as proactive and be master anticipators, this means making more data driven decisions. We now have year on year data comparisons via matter management software, as well as data generated from our legal apps that gives us powerful insights and helps to inform our decisions. Being “busy” can mean many things, and often does not tell the value story simply and relevantly.
In my view, the lawyer of the future requires a trifecta of intelligences – emotional, technical and IQ2.0. Lawyers, like any employee, will also need to have change management, collaboration, project management and creativity as key strengths. Legal leaders will need to be more heartfelt, authentic and possess “soft skills” in abundance.
As someone who has always practised law with an entrepreneurial and innovative mindset, the current law firm model does not easily lend itself to incite faster progress when it comes to integrating tech and innovation as part of its standard operations. There needs to be a greater incentive on senior fee earners, or more pressure from top 25 clients, to encourage change – there is a game changing opportunity here.
Beyond legal skills, we know that we are only truly effective if we build and maintain strong working relationships with our stakeholders. As a legal team, it is part of our culture to be constantly learning in new and unimaginable ways, and experience teaches us not to take that for granted.
As an in-house lawyer, I am in a privileged position to cut across two subsidiaries of the world’s largest beauty company as well as be part of its executive team. I relish being a legal generalist and problem solver, across a plethora of legal issues. Our business is dynamic, always changing and produces fabulous products and is invested in a range of areas of corporate social responsibility – ending violence against women, sustainability and diversity and inclusion.
