GC Sidebar: Jonathan Anschell, Chief Legal Officer at Mattel

In this GC Sidebar Season 2 episode, Paragon Legal CEO Trista Engel speaks with Jonathan Anschell, Chief Legal Officer at Mattel, about navigating AI’s opportunities and challenges, the power of listening, and leading legal through a company’s creative transformation.

Jonathan shares how AI is reshaping both the legal and creative sides of the business—as an accelerant for day-to-day legal work and an ideation engine for creative teams—while keeping intellectual property, safety, and privacy front of mind. He reflects on one of the most valuable lessons of his career: the discipline of truly listening, letting silence sit, and hearing what’s behind the other side’s position before crafting a response.

He also discusses joining Mattel during a pivotal period of transformation from toy maker to IP powerhouse, and how flexible legal talent has helped his lean team take on new strategic work—like building a rights management system—without sacrificing efficiency or growth opportunities for his internal team.

Full episode now available.

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Prefer reading over watching? Below is the complete transcript from our GC Sidebar interview with Jonathan Anschell, Chief Legal Officer at Mattel.

Trista Engel: Welcome to GC Sidebar, a short and sharp conversation series with leading general counsels about the decisions, the reflections, and the people behind the title.

I’m Trista Engel, CEO of Paragon Legal, and today I’m joined by Jonathan Anschell, Chief Legal Officer at Mattel, the global toy and entertainment company behind iconic brands like Barbie, Hot Wheels, American Girl, and Uno. In addition to leading Mattel’s legal work—which in recent years has included over 165 Barbie-related licensing partnerships—Jonathan has launched the company’s pro bono program and also serves on the board of Public Counsel, the nation’s largest pro bono law firm. Jonathan, I’m so excited to chat with you today. Thank you so much for being here.

Jonathan Anschell: Thanks for having me, Trista.

Trista Engel: Let’s dive in! What is one thing you’re most focused on for 2026, and why?

Jonathan Anschell: Well, like a number of your guests on the program, I’m particularly focused on AI, which I think, for anybody in a GC role, offers a really interesting combination of both opportunities and challenges. It can be an accelerant for legal work, a great facilitating function, and an accelerant for creative work and ideation. Like any new form of technology, it also presents challenges—making sure it’s used safely, with respect for intellectual property rights, which are obviously dear to our heart here at Mattel, and with respect to the safety and privacy of users, which is top of mind for a lot of companies, and certainly always top of mind for us here.

Trista Engel: Yeah, absolutely, that’s a big one. Are there any particular challenges, tools, or use cases you’re excited about this year?

Jonathan Anschell: I think there are a number of them. There are a lot of legal tasks that I suspect a lot of your viewers encounter day-to-day that can be sped up or facilitated with AI—not to take the place of legal thinking, but to help people move through the day-to-day of their jobs a little quicker and easier. On the creative side, there’s a lot of potential too—AI as an ideation engine, a way for people to brainstorm in new and different ways, again without substituting for the creative process, but as a way to facilitate it, help people push through the equivalent of writer’s block, and hopefully lead to a really flourishing creative environment for all of us in the IP space.

Trista Engel: Yeah, those are great points. The technology is moving so fast, and there’s still so much to come, but testing, trying, and learning as we go is such a great way to keep on top of it.

Jonathan Anschell: Absolutely.

Trista Engel: What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned as a GC?

Jonathan Anschell: There are many, but if I had to highlight the most important, it’s listening. As lawyers, we’re all trained from the outset to think about what we’re going to say next, how we’re going to make our points, make our case, negotiate our deal. The more of this you do, the more you realize the importance of listening—really hearing what’s behind the other side’s position in a deal or dispute can make a world of difference. Just taking a beat sometimes, letting the silence sit for a minute, and listening—I’d say that’s probably the most valuable lesson I’ve learned over the years.

Trista Engel: That’s so applicable to everyone, in every role. It can be so hard to let the silence sit, or take a second to think, but I love that point—you really need to listen and hear before you can craft an appropriate response.

Jonathan Anschell: Like many things, it’s easier said than done, but it’s certainly an aspiration.

Trista Engel: Yeah, absolutely. What’s one career moment that changed your trajectory?

Jonathan Anschell: There have been a number of them, but certainly one of the most impactful for me was the opportunity to join Mattel. I’ve been here about five and a half years now, and getting the chance to join the company at a time of tremendous growth and energy—when it was moving from its traditional role as a toy maker into much more of an IP company—and into the businesses you now hear about when Mattel’s in the news. Things like the Barbie movie, digital games, other businesses we’re moving into—not to the exclusion or diminution of the toy business in any way, but as new and additional businesses based on our IP. Getting to be part of that transformation, and work with colleagues across the company on those initiatives, has really been a terrific opportunity for me.

Trista Engel: That’s fascinating, and so impactful to the business as a whole. As someone with a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and six- and eight-year-old sons, I can attest to the staying power of the toy business, even as Mattel evolves.

Jonathan Anschell: Outstanding, I’m happy to hear that. What’s been interesting about this journey for Mattel is that we’ve seen exactly the same thing—as the movies succeed and we move into new digital businesses, there’s really no substitute for the excitement on a child’s face when they open a new toy and play with it. There’s still something so special about the tactile experience. What we’re doing in these other businesses is complementary to that—there will never be a substitute for a good toy.

Trista Engel: Yeah, it is magical, you’re right. How have you leveraged flexible legal talent as a way to augment your in-house team?

Jonathan Anschell: We have a very efficient—relatively lean but mighty—internal team of lawyers and paralegals. That said, we’re also working on a number of projects that take us outside of our day-to-day, and that’s where flexible staffing has been a real benefit.

One of the things we’ve been working on, as part of the company’s transformation and move into entertainment and other businesses, is a rights management system. We’re now called upon to answer rights-related questions that are relatively new for the company—questions about whether we have film and television rights to a lot of our properties, for example. Building a system to help us answer those questions requires nimble staffing, because there’s a lot of analysis involved, and the output of a system like that is only as good as the input. Being able to rely on flexible staffing that brings us skilled people to help with that process has been incredibly valuable.

Trista Engel: That’s a great use case. I hear a couple of things in what you said that are really powerful. One is the general augmentation of your team, allowing your lean legal team to get more done. But also, with a lean team, you’re all the more focused on the professional development and opportunities you’re giving your internal folks—giving them the chance to work on new strategic initiatives while backfilling some of their day-to-day with flexible legal talent is such a great way to develop your own team, especially when you’re lean.

Jonathan Anschell: Absolutely right—and it’s responsible and responsive to the business too. Like anybody else, we’re always concerned about costs, and being able to work with flexible solutions enables us to get the right skills to the table without growing our fixed costs year over year in a way that wouldn’t be as cost-efficient as we’d like.

Trista Engel: Absolutely, that’s a huge component for any business to care about. If you weren’t an attorney, what would you be?

Jonathan Anschell: This is one that’s probably, fortunately, a road not taken for me—if I weren’t a lawyer, I’d be trying my hand at stand-up comedy. Probably a good thing for me, and for comedy audiences around the world, that I’m a lawyer instead.

Trista Engel: Well, it’s never too late!

Jonathan Anschell: Haha, we’ll see. Coming soon to an open mic night near you.

Trista Engel: Exactly, I’ll be there. And the bonus question—Paragon turns 20 this year. What’s one memory from 20 years ago that still stands out to you?

Jonathan Anschell: It’s interesting—when I think back 20 years, there were so many changes going on that brought us things we now take for granted. 2005, for example, was the year YouTube launched, and I believe it was a year or two before the advent of the iPhone. Netflix, at the time, was known for its innovation in letting people keep DVDs without late fees. When you think about how the world has changed since then, and the technologies we now take for granted that didn’t even exist back then, it was certainly a big inflection point all around.

Trista Engel: It’s amazing to think about, and it makes me wonder what we’ll say 20 years from now, and how different things will be then.

Jonathan Anschell: Absolutely right.

Trista Engel: Well, this was so fun, Jonathan. You’ve got such an interesting story and journey. Thank you so much for sharing with us today.

Jonathan Anschell: Real pleasure, thanks for including me.

Trista Engel: Alright, that’s a wrap on today’s episode of GC Sidebar. Catch more great conversations on our website at paragonlegal.com. Thanks for tuning in.