What are the most significant cases, projects and/or transactions that you and/or your legal team have recently been involved in?

In general, this past year has seen a significant increase in transactional and regulatory work related to the Puerto Rico international financial entities industry particularly due to recently enacted laws and regulations and the subsequent enforcement of such laws. There has been an active transactional flow related to said industry. In addition, the positive stance and support from the U.S. Government towards the digital asset/cryptocurrency industry has provided a sense of regulatory certainty that allows entrepreneurs to launch many interesting projects in the space and barring another crypto winter, I expect that we will see a significant amount of work in the coming years as the industry becomes more mainstream at the state and local government levels.

Have you had any experiences during your career as a lawyer that stand out as particularly unique or interesting?

I consider myself rather fortunate because my whole career has been particularly interesting. As an attorney, I’ve had the unique opportunity to immerse myself in transactional and regulatory legal work (which is unconventional in markets such as New York with hyper specialised attorneys) but that has allowed me to experience a broad spectrum of legal matters and work which becomes invaluable when you go in-house in the financial services industry (and even more so if you are working with fintechs and other startups in the digital assets/cryptocurrency space).

AI has been taken seriously as a potentially revolutionary technological change in the legal world for a number of years now. Has it had a meaningful impact on how your legal team works in this time?

During this past year, I’ve been experimenting with various AI tools (including one that is generally available to the public and other purpose built for the legal industry (so called legaltech)) with a focus on: contract review/benchmarking and for certain regulatory and corporate research matters. I’ve been positively surprised with the results shown by these tools and they are having a meaningful impact in how I work. They serve as an excellent starting point to deeper research or as a second set of eyes when reviewing contracts and identifying potential issues in extensive contracts (sometimes saving a significant amount of time). I am looking forward to continuing experimenting with these tools and how they will shape the future of the legal profession. AI will not replace lawyers (as some people claim) but it should be embraced responsibly by attorneys that seek to maintain their status as providers of top-notch legal services (whether in-house, in a firm or as a solo attorney).