An interview with Anna Lozynski Former General Counsel for L’Oréal Australia and New Zealand
About Anna Lozynski
Anna Lozynski is the Former General Counsel for L’Oréal Australia and New Zealand. Together with the team, Anna supports 30 brands in Australia and 19 brands in New Zealand as well as the corporate functions.
Riding the wave of change
“As the business world is changing rapidly, so is the expectation of the legal function and its lawyers to also ride that wave of change. So we need to be more agile, we need to be more business intelligent and we certainly need to have a greater level of innovation intelligence as well. So as a legal team, we have four strategic priorities.”
“The first is leading legal innovation. The second is championing privacy and data. The third is supporting the business. And the fourth is driving education and training.”
Keeping up with the pace of business
“Given that the business world is changing rapidly, the legal team also needs to be more agile, solve problems faster, and make sure that it is keeping up with the pace of the business, both from a knowledge perspective and a service perspective. Further, the legislative landscape keeps changing in Australia and New Zealand. So it’s important for a legal team to be as proactive as possible. We need to be more innovative. So we need to ensure that in order to service the business and to accommodate the change, the pace and the dynamism, there’s a wonderful opportunity for us to be more innovative than ever, which is exactly what we’re doing.”
The value of data
“I’d like to think of matter management as getting your house in order so that the team knows, and as a general counsel, you know what is going through the legal function, where our time is being spent, how productive we are, how much value we’re adding, or indeed measuring the performance of the team.”
“Data is a wonderful way to collect facts and lawyers like facts about what the legal function is delivering on. And furthermore, it’s a really great way to connect with the business and speak in a language that resonates with them. We all know that famous quote, “If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.”
The matter management journey with Dazychain
“We began our matter management journey using one of our internal systems, but quickly realized that because it wasn’t a bespoke tool for our legal team. After some months of using that, we quickly realized that it was important for us to have a bespoke matter management tool that was built for a legal function.”
“So we went to market and based on UX, so user design primarily, but also functionality and the ability to go on the journey with our legal tech vendor, we decided to appoint Dazychain for our matter management tool.”
The Dazychain outcomes
“Dazychain has allowed us to get our legal house in order. What I mean by that is that we have command over the volume and the velocity, the risk, the effort, all recorded in one spot. It allows us to have a conversation around capacity that is based on facts and is based on quantitative data rather than using the usual lawyer buzzword, which is to say that one is busy or that one is at capacity. So again, as a team, we’re using business language to describe where we’re putting our effort, where we’re adding value, and of course, where our capacity is at.”
“So we’ve been working with Dazychain since the start of 2018. After taking a few months to make sure that we’d set up the system and customized it adequately for our needs, we’ve really been on a journey of learning. The L’Oréal ANZ legal team started working with Dazychain at the beginning of 2018. And we took a few months to make sure that we implemented and customized the system to suit our needs.”
Data obsession
“And since then, we’ve really been on a fabulous journey of learning the system, getting a command of our data, becoming a little bit data obsessed, I must say, and really trying to make sure that the reporting works in a way that works for our business audience. And that could be speaking to our CEO, speaking with my executive peers, working as a team day-to-day. But really it’s a tool that we use across the day, every day. And it’s certainly one that is ingrained in our way of working.”
Innovation as a way of life
“We’ve been innovating since 2015 and transforming the way that we deliver legal services to the L’Oréal ANZ business. And I’d like to say with much success. And so the next frontier for us as a legal team is getting into the space of artificial intelligence for contract review. We’re looking at legal intake matter management. We’re starting to dabble in more formal playbooks. But to be honest, as a team, we are constantly making sure that we know who the new players are in the market. We understand what legal technologies available to us, and then, it’s really about working out when is the best time, what is the business case and whether it fits into our overall strategic plan about how we lead legal innovation to support the business.”
Leadership in a time of change
“There are a few things that are important to me as a leader. The first is making sure that we are doing the best job we can as lawyers. And in today’s digital age, that doesn’t mean just manually reviewing contracts or providing advice. It can absolutely mean embracing technology and utilizing the power of its speed, self service capability and robustness. Second, it’s really important for me as a leader that my team is highly engaged and that we all go on an innovation or a transformation journey together, because otherwise, the magic doesn’t happen.”
“The third point is being really clear about how we manage change. I know lawyers typically don’t think about their function being having a change management arm, but in fact, to succeed in embracing technology, there has to be a lot of thought effort and creativity that’s invested in ensuring that the change management curve or the change management wave is written smoothly.”
Experimentation means sometimes you’re not successful
“Now, that doesn’t always mean it’s perfect and it doesn’t always mean it’s successful, but the point is to have a go and then we learn from our failures and from our successes and we go on. But we’re really clear on the vision, we’re really clear on our mission, and we’re really clear on making sure that we’re doing the best job possible to support the business in Australia and New Zealand. I think data is absolutely the next frontier for a legal function. It’s a no brainer.”
Interested in discussing Dazychain solutions?
An interview with Anna Lozynski Former General Counsel for L’Oréal Australia and New Zealand
Anna Lozynski
Former General Counsel
L'Oréal
About Anna Lozynski
Anna Lozynski is the Former General Counsel for L’Oréal Australia and New Zealand. Together with the team, Anna supports 30 brands in Australia and 19 brands in New Zealand as well as the corporate functions.
Riding the wave of change
“As the business world is changing rapidly, so is the expectation of the legal function and its lawyers to also ride that wave of change. So we need to be more agile, we need to be more business intelligent and we certainly need to have a greater level of innovation intelligence as well. So as a legal team, we have four strategic priorities.”
“The first is leading legal innovation. The second is championing privacy and data. The third is supporting the business. And the fourth is driving education and training.”
Keeping up with the pace of business
“Given that the business world is changing rapidly, the legal team also needs to be more agile, solve problems faster, and make sure that it is keeping up with the pace of the business, both from a knowledge perspective and a service perspective. Further, the legislative landscape keeps changing in Australia and New Zealand. So it’s important for a legal team to be as proactive as possible. We need to be more innovative. So we need to ensure that in order to service the business and to accommodate the change, the pace and the dynamism, there’s a wonderful opportunity for us to be more innovative than ever, which is exactly what we’re doing.”
The value of data
“I’d like to think of matter management as getting your house in order so that the team knows, and as a general counsel, you know what is going through the legal function, where our time is being spent, how productive we are, how much value we’re adding, or indeed measuring the performance of the team.”
“Data is a wonderful way to collect facts and lawyers like facts about what the legal function is delivering on. And furthermore, it’s a really great way to connect with the business and speak in a language that resonates with them. We all know that famous quote, “If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.”
The matter management journey with Dazychain
“We began our matter management journey using one of our internal systems, but quickly realized that because it wasn’t a bespoke tool for our legal team. After some months of using that, we quickly realized that it was important for us to have a bespoke matter management tool that was built for a legal function.”
“So we went to market and based on UX, so user design primarily, but also functionality and the ability to go on the journey with our legal tech vendor, we decided to appoint Dazychain for our matter management tool.”
The Dazychain outcomes
“Dazychain has allowed us to get our legal house in order. What I mean by that is that we have command over the volume and the velocity, the risk, the effort, all recorded in one spot. It allows us to have a conversation around capacity that is based on facts and is based on quantitative data rather than using the usual lawyer buzzword, which is to say that one is busy or that one is at capacity. So again, as a team, we’re using business language to describe where we’re putting our effort, where we’re adding value, and of course, where our capacity is at.”
“So we’ve been working with Dazychain since the start of 2018. After taking a few months to make sure that we’d set up the system and customized it adequately for our needs, we’ve really been on a journey of learning. The L’Oréal ANZ legal team started working with Dazychain at the beginning of 2018. And we took a few months to make sure that we implemented and customized the system to suit our needs.”
Data obsession
“And since then, we’ve really been on a fabulous journey of learning the system, getting a command of our data, becoming a little bit data obsessed, I must say, and really trying to make sure that the reporting works in a way that works for our business audience. And that could be speaking to our CEO, speaking with my executive peers, working as a team day-to-day. But really it’s a tool that we use across the day, every day. And it’s certainly one that is ingrained in our way of working.”
Innovation as a way of life
“We’ve been innovating since 2015 and transforming the way that we deliver legal services to the L’Oréal ANZ business. And I’d like to say with much success. And so the next frontier for us as a legal team is getting into the space of artificial intelligence for contract review. We’re looking at legal intake matter management. We’re starting to dabble in more formal playbooks. But to be honest, as a team, we are constantly making sure that we know who the new players are in the market. We understand what legal technologies available to us, and then, it’s really about working out when is the best time, what is the business case and whether it fits into our overall strategic plan about how we lead legal innovation to support the business.”
Leadership in a time of change
“There are a few things that are important to me as a leader. The first is making sure that we are doing the best job we can as lawyers. And in today’s digital age, that doesn’t mean just manually reviewing contracts or providing advice. It can absolutely mean embracing technology and utilizing the power of its speed, self service capability and robustness. Second, it’s really important for me as a leader that my team is highly engaged and that we all go on an innovation or a transformation journey together, because otherwise, the magic doesn’t happen.”
“The third point is being really clear about how we manage change. I know lawyers typically don’t think about their function being having a change management arm, but in fact, to succeed in embracing technology, there has to be a lot of thought effort and creativity that’s invested in ensuring that the change management curve or the change management wave is written smoothly.”
Experimentation means sometimes you’re not successful
“Now, that doesn’t always mean it’s perfect and it doesn’t always mean it’s successful, but the point is to have a go and then we learn from our failures and from our successes and we go on. But we’re really clear on the vision, we’re really clear on our mission, and we’re really clear on making sure that we’re doing the best job possible to support the business in Australia and New Zealand. I think data is absolutely the next frontier for a legal function. It’s a no brainer.”