The Challenge
AIA New Zealand’s legal team is made up of senior lawyers who support all areas of the business. Everyone does a bit of everything. That flexibility is a real strength but it also means that when someone steps away, finding someone to step in with the same capability is difficult.
Over time, the team has experienced a series of overlapping changes due to parental leave, internal promotion, and secondments within the business. Covering those gaps wasn’t simple. Securing a secondee from a law firm had become harder, with firms less able to release staff. The timing was also rarely clean or predictable, and one move often triggered another, making it hard to define a fixed-term role in advance.
What the team really needed was someone senior who could step in immediately, pick things up quickly, and keep the work moving without a long runway.
As Head of Legal, Fiona Wong puts it, “We had a succession of people go on parental leave or temporarily move within the business, so we needed extra resource to cover those absences.”
The Solution
AIA had worked with Juno Lawyer Jen Hanton in both 2021 and 2023. So when a new gap opened up in 2024, returning to Juno (and to Jen) was the natural next step.
As it turned out, Jen was available. She already knew the team and just as importantly, the business already knew her.
From day one of her very first engagement, Jen had always been treated as a full member of the team, not a contractor with a narrow brief or a secondee still tied to another firm. “As far as the business was concerned, she was another lawyer in our team,” Fiona says. “And from our perspective, we could throw anything at her, and she would pick it up.”
Jen wasn’t an insurance specialist when she first joined, but that proved to be no barrier. She was able to rely more on strong commercial and in-house foundations than deep insurance knowledge. As Fiona notes, “some things you can learn on the job, as long as you’ve got those really great foundations.” Skills developed over time such as contract negotiation, commercial judgment, and the ability to engage effectively with the business were already there and Jen’s industry knowledge grew naturally.
What began as cover for a single period of parental leave evolved organically into something longer. As the team continued to shift, with more leave, a promotion, and another gap, Fiona extended the engagement rather than starting again.
Because Juno engagements can flex within agreed terms, there was no need to bring in someone new each time a gap appeared. In practice, that meant four back-to-back engagements with Jen over 18 months - each one tailored to a new circumstance rather than a pre-planned arrangement.
The Benefits
"We hit the jackpot."
For Fiona and her team, the value showed up in minimal disruption and continuity. “One of the biggest benefits for us was that Jen slotted straight into the team,” Fiona says. “There was no suggestion that she was just a ‘contractor’ or only doing certain types of work.”
That ease mattered. There was no need to redistribute work internally or manage a temporary resource. Jen stepped in and got on with it from day one.
Because the team works collaboratively and shares work, Jen could initially lead on the commercial matters that played to her strengths, while others picked up the more insurance-specific work. When Jen returned for subsequent engagements, there was no reset. Her relationships with the business were already established, and the reaction from stakeholders was simple: “Oh, Jen’s coming back, great.” Jen was capable, trusted, and able to fit straight back in, allowing the team to maintain momentum without missing a beat.
Fiona also values what Juno offers beyond the placement itself. The Juno Learning sessions and GC Connect programme focus on the issues in-house lawyers genuinely grapple with, rather than solely traditional legal topics. She notes that recent sessions on Demystifying AI and Human-Centred Leadership were the kind of content she finds genuinely useful.
Looking ahead, Fiona is clear about her next step, "If a similar resource need arose, based on the experience we had with Jen, I wouldn’t hesitate to reach out to Juno again."
I wouldn’t hesitate to reach out to Juno again.
Dedicated in-house legal
Juno provides experienced in-house lawyers who embed directly into legal teams, stepping into roles where continuity, capability, and flexibility matter.
For teams like AIA’s, that means support that can:
- step in quickly at a senior level
- integrate as part of the team, not alongside it
- flex as circumstances change