For more than a decade as Legal Operations Director at Pacific Gas & Electric, Juanita Luna helped turn the company’s law department into a modern business unit. She built structure, systems, and reporting while the department was also managing major challenges. The work earned her an In-House Impact Award from The Recorder.
Since late 2023, Juanita has run Luna Legal Ops, advising in-house teams on everything from operations assessments and legal tech rollouts to interim legal ops leadership.
In this edition of our Provider Spotlight series, we talked with Juanita about why she went independent, where legal departments are underusing flexible legal ops talent, why she believes a great process depends on the right tools, and how AI is reshaping the profession.
Q: What made you leave your in-house role to go independent?
Juanita: I stayed longer than expected through the pandemic, but I didn’t want to fully retire just as AI was taking off in legal. I didn’t want to miss the party. I wanted to be part of that shift. Going independent allowed me to work part-time, pick the projects I’m passionate about, and maintain my own schedule. It’s worked out great.
Q: Where do you think legal departments are still underutilizing flexible legal ops talent?
Juanita: Mainly in internal assessments and AI usage. Legal departments often get top-down directives from a CLO or GC saying, “We have to do more of this. Figure this out.” They feel nobody knows them like they do, so they don’t reach out for external expertise. AI is the most obvious area for that.
The other thing in-house still loses sight of is bandwidth. They add on projects and initiatives, and the teams are just supposed to absorb that. More recently, I was hired because of bandwidth. They had the talent, they just didn’t have enough resources. Early on, I was brought into projects where they really didn’t have the in-house talent, so they wanted seasoned expertise, or gray hair if you will.
Q: When is flexible legal ops support the right call versus a full-time hire or a consulting firm?
Juanita: I’m a big fan of consulting firms, and I’ve used them in the past. But while you build a relationship with senior leaders, junior analysts do the embedded work. It’s a large operation and a separate cost center, which can be limiting when budgets are tight.
The value of flex support is agility, specialized skills, experience, and custom duration without lengthy procurement contract reviews. While both options have their place, hiring a big entity can sometimes feel like bringing on an entirely separate department.
Q: How do you start a new engagement?
Juanita: First, I define who the stakeholders are, and then I speak to them. Not just the CLO or GC, but practice heads, lawyers, and front-line staff. Listening tours are critical to understanding the culture and uncovering internal disconnects. People love to talk about themselves, and in the work context you find out a lot.
Litigation and employment may not really know what each other are doing. I say, “Wait a minute, your department does that? Have you talked to so-and-so in litigation?” Everybody’s just too busy, and a lot of people are still remote, so you don’t get that continuity or cohesiveness as much. When flex talent comes in and that’s the assignment, they’re going to open up. That might be because of Priori’s brand, but I never had a trust issue. It can help reveal alignment gaps across departments that are usually too busy or remote to coordinate.
Q: Have you seen legal teams buy the right tool and still fail to get value from it?
Juanita: Yes, that hasn’t changed. It’s usually underutilization, caused by a lack of use rather than issues with the company or vendor. You often already have the necessary capabilities without buying new systems.
Busy lawyers don’t have time for extra clicks. Their focus is on winning litigation, not tracking cost trends. Legal ops must make tool usage compelling. Companies sometimes implement a “1-3-10” view on why something’s important. It’s tailored for the CEO (1 second), CLO/GC (3 seconds), and practice lead (10 seconds), to give important insights quickly and prompt them to take action that leads to decisions.
It’s a mindset issue and a longstanding change management issue. People are used to requesting data from operations rather than self-serving, leading to a lack of ownership in the tools.
Q: Some legal ops professionals say people and process should come before technology. Does that hold true for you?
Juanita: No, I don’t think so. And I’m not sure I ever thought that. You can have a great process, but if you don’t have the tools, it’s not a great process. It’s inefficient. It’s slow. It’s redundant.
While I was auditing a high-growth startup, I found co-heads of legal ops duplicating the exact same work as a backup plan. Even top-tier companies can be surprisingly inefficient internally.
You’ve got to have the tools. There’s too many tools out there, and with so many affordable options available, there is no excuse not to. You don’t have to buy the most expensive technology widget at all. There’s no excuse for not having the right technology and the right systems, because if you know what you’re doing, that can be the enabler of a very effective process to get to the right result.
Q: Legal ops has historically had to fight for its value to be understood. What does building influence look like today?
Juanita: You have to get a seat at the leadership table. And it’s not tokenism, it’s not a pat on the head. It’s being invited to that table first, even if it starts on a project basis. But when you have a foot in the door, make it meaningful. Share the best paper you ever wrote, or your best brief so to speak. Make it compelling so you get invited more often.
Legal ops acts as a vital conduit among staff, outside counsel, internal business partners like finance, and other critical departments in the lines of business. As the one group in charge of the business of law, I don’t say you’ve got to fight your way in. You’ve got to influence your way in. The impetus has to be on legal ops to get inside and build your advocates. It’s a relationship role with a lot of depth behind it.
Q: What are the biggest misconceptions about AI in legal operations, and where is the opportunity?
Juanita: The opportunity is huge. A common misconception is that AI in legal is limited to document review or basic finance analytics. Two years ago, people thought we needed courses in prompt engineering, but early experience showed we did not.
There is almost nothing AI can’t do. I couldn’t operate independently without it—it acts as both my manager and assistant, keeping me organized and executing tasks.
Current gaps stem from users not knowing how to leverage the technology. If you lack the knowledge, hire a consultant, attend conferences, or educate yourself. It takes very little time to get up to speed.
Q: Looking ahead five years, what does the legal ops profession look like?
Juanita: Legal ops has gone through cycles. When I joined my last company as a regular employee, CLOC was just being born. It grew rapidly, and then there was a lot of overhead. “Why are these salaries so high? What do all these staff do?” It’s always about money. So in five years, it’ll go through cycles again.
Right now there’s so much restructuring going on. It’s disruptive, but I don’t know that that’s in a bad way. There’s been so much change in recent years that you can’t set up your tools, your process, and your systems to do the work you were already doing. You’ve got to look at it completely differently. Do we even need to be doing this work?
I don’t think legal ops is going away. I think it will thin a bit, and then it’ll go up again. We’re not going to change AI. AI is going to change us.
Q: For a legal ops professional weighing whether flex work is a real career path or a stopgap, what would you tell them?
Juanita: It can be both. Over half the opportunities ask if I want a permanent role, but I dismiss those since I prefer short-term projects. Recently, companies struggling to find full-time hires bring in interim support just to get work moving. Sometimes these lead to permanent positions, but not always.
I prefer shorter projects, though “short-term” can span six months or longer depending on the goal. I once worked with a client for a year on a part-time retainer. Flex work is adaptable to whatever you need it to be.
Priori makes it easy to adjust as well. If you want to scale your hours up or down a few months in, you have the flexibility and access to a broad network of opportunities.
Q: How does finding engagements through Priori compare to finding clients on your own?
Juanita: It’s much better. However, I was fortunate because my very first assignment came from a CLO I met at a conference, who hired me right away. And I thought, “Oh, this is how it’s going to go.” But that’s not how it went.
I think one really needs the network, the brand of Priori, that I certainly don’t have. I’m not in marketing at all. I didn’t aspire to do that. I’m not going to pound the pavement. So for me, it was terrific to have the opportunity to line up with a company like Priori. It’s great to have that at your back.
Q: You mentor and teach. What draws you to that alongside the client work?
Juanita: On most of my assignments, I end up mentoring somebody, which I love doing. There’s reverse mentoring, too. The more you’re talking to someone, you realize they know a lot about something I don’t know about. I’ve mentored some people for 30 years, and the highest compliment is when a mentee surpasses my career. Mentoring keeps me fresh on current issues and helps me learn about myself along the way.
Q: Any final thoughts?
Juanita: Empathy and enthusiasm are foundational in legal ops. The hurdles of change management will still be around in five years, so it’s important to understand the perspectives of everyone involved, from paralegals and financial analysts to the CLO reporting to the board. Listen with genuine understanding, lead with empathy, and bring the energy to inspire others.
Flexible legal ops talent gives in-house teams the expertise and bandwidth to move major initiatives forward, from AI adoption to tech rollouts, without adding permanent headcount. If you’re ready to see how flex legal ops could help your department, connect with our team.
