By Pablo Yannone Sancho, Journalist at GLTH

Talking about ESG and assuming the responsibility to act upon new regulations, trends, and expectations, has become of increasing importance over the years. The person we are getting to know better today has acquired a lot of knowledge in the areas of ESG and digital transformation, through the organization of high-impact summits where “expert advice and experience on these fields are shared in order to generate positive changes. Let's meet him better!
Juan Carlos Luna began his career as a lawyer in Mexico before transitioning to the U.S., where he now resides. He worked with major law firms in both countries before moving into the corporate world, where he spent 15 years in various roles, including as head of the legal department for Latin America and later overseeing a global transformation of the legal department at Hewlett Packard. This shift exposed him to disruptive trends in legal operations and legal technology over a decade ago.
After his corporate experience, Luna founded Lawgistic, an alternative legal service provider focused on international projects. Six years ago, he co-founded a sister company, Lawit Group, which specializes in consulting. Lawit Group helps organizations integrate legal technology and improve operational efficiency, blending legal and tech expertise to support businesses in their digital transformation. He is also a partner in Opslink, a leading LegalOps consultancy, and NORTH, a US-based investment consultancy.
In his work, Luna collaborates with multidisciplinary teams that bring diverse perspectives to the challenges companies face during digital transformation strategies. For over a decade, he has balanced his focus between legal consulting, and legal operations and technological aspects, consistently working to enhance efficiency and innovation in legal departments, including expertise in ESG, and its intricate relationship with digital transformations.
Why is it so important to talk about ESG in legal tech?
ESG is a transversal, inclusive dimension of several aspects that touches many angles of business operations and financial aspects.” One of the most challenging aspects of ESG is “reporting.” and analysis of data. Why?
“Organizations need to be more transparent in order to avoid issues like greenwashing, fraud, lack of compliance, or certain activities that are not aligned with the financial, legal, and sustainable goals,” claims Juan Carlos. “And reporting cannot be done without technological tools.”
“So, the link between ESG and digital transformation is not only necessary, it's almost natural,” adds Juan Carlos. “So technology allows most of this to happen. And at the same time, it also allows many industries to transform and be able to react and be more effective in climate change strategies, corporate governance controls, and other compliance requeriments.”
A technology tool that plays a “critical” role in these scenarios is Artificial Intelligence. Its ability to improve data analysis, which is a “golden component of any operation,” allows it to track and measure information that, otherwise, would be disconnected, incomplete, or imprecise, “It's really a tool that companies that do not embrace it, will be facing a very difficult challenge, they will be losing competitiveness.” And they have to do it fast.
“The speed of change is so relevant that no one can just take the risk of sitting on the sidelines watching what happens and not taking an active role,” claims Juan Carlos. “The capabilities of technology, if properly selected and well implemented, certainly provide a winning formula: be more intelligent, more predictive, be able to act faster, and more effectively.”
The power of information, enhanced by AI: “if you put trash into the system, you will get trash”
Hallucinations, false references, incomplete or erroneous data, and lack of privacy, inter alia, have pushed organizations to build their own ChatGPTs, as a “self-made chat,” that allows them to “build the same ecosystem or the same operational system, but with their own controlled information,” as Juan Carlos says. “Banks have been doing this extremely effectively. Healthcare and retail (in mature markets) are doing this successfully.. but think of all the other industries and their huge opportunities…”
Of course, this information, the data, is the key element to a good system. “If you put trash into the system, you will get trash.” “If you get clean information, correct information, complete information, the algorithm will learn from it, will benefit from all the components, and will be able to produce the right answers to the right questions.” And any in-house legal department or any law firm could greatly benefit from this by using “all the amount of information that they produce internally and for the clients…”
“The benefit is just gigantic because they can generate a lot of analysis, a lot of interpretation of that data, which can help expand the predictability opportunities..”
Challenges for Digital Transformation: Juan Carlos' advice
In the legal industry, the main threat is the amount of information that lawyers need to review, understand, and process. There is a “circle of items that need to be happening at the same time to really build a system of business intelligence or knowledge management that works”: for example, “the specific pain points that need to be fixed from an operational perspective, the culture of change that need to be developed to embrace disruptions and digital transformation, the proper understanding of available tools, the return on investment, how long the technology implementation takes, what type of training do I need to give to my team members to fully use the capabilities of that technology.”
There is a “change of perspective” that disrupts “the typical operational model” and creates a new one that involves a complex preparation. Juan Carlos recommends asking oneself four questions: What are my challenges? What are my opportunities? What type of issues do I really need to transform? And what might be the best tools to do it?
To the last question, Juan Carlos recommends two things: first, “start playing with some tools, like talking to ChatGPT and other LLMs, to get familiar with ithem.” The other one is “to analyze use cases”: “find out what other companies or other law firms have already done in terms of how they changed the mindset to be a more digital organization. And look for details and examples of what has happened in other countries, in other regions, in similar law firms and similar companies.”
“Obviously, as much as you can narrow that type of analysis, you will get a lot of valuable information about what companies are leading the segment in terms of the solutions they have developed. And, how fast the implementation of such tools take, what is the necessary investment, how can the return on investment be meassured, and how easy it is to use such tools.”
For every action in each area of law, you need to see what you're doing manually, costly, or ineffectively that can be exponentially improved by the implementation of certain software to get the benefits of automatization, or transformation.” “Obviously, the implementation takes a lot of planning, a lot of assistance in terms of allowing experts to guide you through the process and consult with you to see what the best alternatives might be for your firm or for your legal department and take it from there.
A good example of all of this is what is happening in the area of ESG and the required components in order to be able to track the metrics to implement the necessary technologies to access information and report on that information. That is something that is just booming right now.”
Some backgrounds of Juan Carlos
Juan Carlos is a firm believer in the power of creativity and innovation. To him, innovation is nothing more than “creativity, having fun.” He insists that creativity can be applied in every aspect of life. However, in today’s world, Juan Carlos sees a challenge: “Maybe we're too busy and consumed by information from every angle that you can imagine. That overload can sometimes stifle our creativity rather than fuel it. His advice? Keep a healthy balance between the digital and physical worlds to maintain clarity, focus and perspective.
Sports and traveling help him disconnect from this constant flow of information and recharge mentally. He believes that stepping away from work is crucial for keeping the “mind fresh and open to new ideas.” For Juan Carlos, maintaining this balance isn’t just helpful; it’s a necessity. It allows him to stay grounded, and focus on what truly matters.
And Juan Carlos has achieved it once more! He has had time and concentration to co-author and coordinate a book focused on ESG, published in August of last year. The book explores the challenges and opportunities in creating a sustainable world. “It's a collaboration of 22 experts in different fields,” explains Juan Carlos. “I had the pleasure of integrating, designing the book, and inviting these experts to join the effort of bringing together the analysis of ESG topics from different sectors and angles.” Juan Carlos is particularly proud that this is the first book of its kind in Mexico, and he hopes it will spark meaningful conversations on the critical topic of sustainability across industries.
When asked what advice he would give his younger self, Juan Carlos emphasizes the importance of soft skills. “The cultural approach, the communication and analytical skills, the capacity to reinvent, to adapt and quickly relate and adjust to many different moving pieces in a constantly changing environment… Those types of skills are what companies are looking for right now, and from a social perspective, the capacity to escape from information overflow that brings no clear benefit.”
Founder, Lawit Group
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