Chris Apple
Member Services & Development Manager
Arkansas
The CLOC Member Spotlight series profiles the incredible individuals within our community who are driving transformation in legal ops. Each spotlight provides inspiration, fosters connections, and gives readers a chance to learn more about their peers. By sharing these stories, we celebrate the diverse voices and talents that make CLOC a vibrant and connected community.
Krysta Johnson is a Senior Legal Operations Evangelist with Docusign. She serves as the regional co-lead of CLOC Pacific Northwest. Keep reading to learn more about Krysta.
About me:
I’m Krysta Johnson, a long-time in-house legal operations leader and now the Legal Operations Evangelist at DocuSign. I’ve spent nearly 20 years in the legal field—including 12 years inside legal departments at companies like Big Fish Games, PayScale, AWS, and Lexion—where I built and scaled contracting, operations, and technology programs from the ground up.
Over the past several years, I’ve focused my career on helping legal teams modernize the way they manage agreements. At DocuSign, I partner closely with in-house legal professionals to translate real operational pain points into better technology, smarter workflows, and more strategic outcomes. I’m particularly passionate about the intersection of legal ops, AI, and practical process design—how we can remove friction for attorneys, create clarity for the business, and empower legal teams to operate with confidence.
Mentorship and community-building are core to who I am. I regularly support legal professionals transitioning into legal ops roles, taking 2–3 calls a week to provide guidance, share resources, and help them grow. I also lead a quarterly Legal & Legal Ops Book Club and speak frequently at CLOC, ACC, and industry events on topics like AI adoption, contracting transformation, and legal ops career pathways.
I’m a mom of three, an avid traveler, and someone who finds a lot of joy in making the legal ops ecosystem more connected, collaborative, and human. I love this community, and I’m grateful for the chance to contribute to it.
Why I love being a CLOC member:
I originally joined CLOC for purely practical reasons (to stay connected to the broader legal operations landscape) without any real expectation of what being part of a professional organization could offer. I had never been a member of a community like this before. But what I discovered was so much more than industry insight. CLOC became a place where I found peers who understood the challenges of building and scaling legal operations, people who were generous with their experience, and a community committed to elevating the entire profession. I choose to be part of CLOC because it’s where I’ve grown the most. Shared learning, collaborative problem-solving, and relationships have expanded my career in ways I never anticipated. It’s not just a network; it’s a community that makes all of us better.
My advice for other legal ops professionals:
One of the most powerful lessons I’ve learned in my legal operations career is the value of community. Attorneys are taught early in their careers that networking is essential, but that was never a skill I was taught (or even encouraged) to build. It wasn’t until I joined CLOC that I truly understood how transformative a strong professional network can be. I wish I had started sooner. If you’re not sure where to begin, keep it simple: reach out to two or three legal ops professionals you admire. Offer to buy them a coffee, and when you make the ask, set a clear intention for the conversation – whether it’s hearing their career journey, learning how they’ve approached professional development, or exploring how they’ve navigated a challenge you’re facing.That small step is what kickstarted my own professional community, and it has paid dividends ever since and I have built real friendships. Legal ops is a discipline built on shared experience and collective problem-solving. The connections you build today will be some of your greatest sources of insight, support, and opportunity throughout your career.
A fun fact about me:
I started building LEGO sets during the pandemic, convinced I’d be back in an office long before I finished the massive Hogwarts Castle I had just opened. (Spoiler: the castle was done months before I ever returned to a desk).
As I began attending conferences, I discovered that LEGOs were the perfect way to reward myself for pushing through my extreme fear of public speaking – something that was not an easy feat as someone with AuDHD.
Over time, this turned into a full-blown collection so large that we had to build custom cabinets to display it all. Today, LEGO building is both my creative outlet and my favorite way to de-stress. My current project? The nearly six-foot LEGO Titanic.
CLOC Member Spotlights provide an opportunity to showcase members within our community who are making a difference in their organizations, in their CLOC groups, within the CLOC community and/or the industry as a whole. Do you know of a really cool thing a CLOC member is doing? We invite you to nominate a member of the CLOC Community for a future feature in the CLOC Member Spotlights Series.