  Lepton flavor-violating processes offer interesting possibilities to probe
new physics at multi-TeV scale. We discuss those in the framework of effective
field theory, emphasizing the role of gluonic operators. Those operators are
obtained by integrating out heavy quarks that are kinematically inaccessible at
the scale where low-energy experiments take place and make those experiments
sensitive to the couplings of lepton flavor changing neutral currents to heavy
quarks. We discuss constraints on the Wilson coefficients of those operators
from the muon conversion $\mu^- + (A,Z) \to e^- + (A,Z)$ and from lepton
flavor-violating tau decays with one or two hadrons in the final state, e.g.
$\tau \to \ell \ \eta^{(\prime)}$ and $\tau \to \ell \ \pi^+\pi^-$ with $\ell =
\mu, e$. To illustrate the results we discuss explicit examples of constraining
parameters of leptoquark models.
