The technology practice will be headed by Etienne Luquet Farías and Israel Cedillo Lazcano, specialists in the field who will offer comprehensive and strategic legal advice in all issues relating to innovation, both in the private and public sectors. They will be responsible for the design and supervision of projects relating to the development of technology-focused startups, software and hardware IP, technology transfer, privacy policies and venture capital, as well as fintech, crypto assets, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The technology practice will assist clients in the determination of possible civil or criminal liabilities arising from the creation and use of algorithms, the assignment of rights, the drafting of codes of ethics and regulation through the use of technologies, among other needs. "Technology law involves a plurality of legal norms and technical issues, making it a particularly complex cross-disciplinary practice. Through the use of new technologies, legal problems can be solved in a new way, creating new opportunities," the firm said in a statement.

In 2017, investments in startups riding the wave of AI across the world leapt up by 141% in a year, amounting to 15.2 billion dollars. Some 1,100 new startups came into existence. The fourth industrial revolution is very much underway and has sent shockwaves through all sectors, from agriculture to cybersecurity as well as business and even healthcare. Some observers even believe that the economic growth of a country soon be assessed, not by its capital but by its level of maturity in terms of AI. These predictions will no doubt delight some and terrify others.

As different institutions and firms have conflicting analyses and forecasts there is no short answer, nor a unique one even because of differing assumptions and huge uncertainty about the future. A widely circulated paper published in 2013 by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne from Oxford University estimated that 47% of jobs in the US was at risk from automation; whereas a report issued by the OECD in 2016 concluded that across 21 of its member-countries, on average only 9% of jobs could be automated. Meanwhile, the World Economic Forum also reported its estimates: automation and technological advancements could lead to a total loss of 7.1 million and a total gain of two million jobs. The conventional view is that routine office and factory work is most vulnerable to automation. However, the findings of the McKinsey Global Institute's report on automation, employment and productivity are more nuanced: a detailed analysis of 2,000 work activities for over 800 occupations on the US labor market revealed that even the highest-paid occupations, including physician and senior executive, have a significant amount of activity that can be automated.