The Firm
Two jurists, two perspectives, one vision
A shared education in the same Doctoral School of Law and New Technologies, and the complementary career paths of Marco Giacomello and Maria Livia Rizzo, gave rise to a common vision.
Law must not merely follow innovation: it must understand its potential, anticipate its challenges and help steer its development.
From this conviction comes a legal advisory firm dedicated to deep tech, a place where law, technology and ethics meet to read the future and turn its challenges into opportunities.
The founders
Marco Giacomello
Avvocato · Legal & Innovation Advisor
- Legal Design & Experience
- AI Governance
- Neurodiritti
- Startup & IP
He holds a PhD in Law and New Technologies from CIRSFID, University of Bologna, where he trained on the relationship between legal systems and technological innovation.
He advises high-tech companies and startups on Intellectual Property, IT Contracts, Artificial Intelligence Governance and Data Protection, applying legal design principles: agile, accessible, compliant documents and processes, built to be used rather than filed away.
He is CEO of Giacomello Venture and Of Counsel at RP Legal & Tax, where he has led the Legal Design programme since 2020. He serves as Data Protection Officer (DPO) for several companies.
He is an adjunct professor at Bologna Business School and teaches in courses, master's programmes and executive education on technology law, legal design and the clarity of legal writing.
He is a founding member of IDBN (Italian Digital Biomanufacturing Network) and a TEDx speaker on ethics and robotics.
He works on neurorights and mind-machine interface technologies, and is the creator of kairOS, the firm's operating system, and of the Neuro Legal Cortex analysis algorithm that drives its reading of documents.
When the wind of change blows, some people build walls, others build windmills.
Maria Livia Rizzo
Avvocato · Data Protection & Cybersecurity
- Data Protection & GDPR
- Cybersecurity & NIS2
- Health tech & dati sanitari
- AI & Legal Engineering
Avvocato and Founding Partner of Deep Tech Law, she supports multinationals, large organisations, institutions and high-tech startups in implementing compliance management systems and in the legal governance of frontier technologies.
Her practice combines the foundations of traditional law with the dynamics of complex systems, focusing on Data Protection & Data Governance, Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence. She has built deep, specialised experience in health tech, pharmaceuticals and medical devices, working directly with hospitals, research centres and innovative companies.
An advocate of the Legal Engineering approach, she combines the development of legal tech tools with legal design methods to deliver advice that is highly tailored and built into digital systems.
She holds a PhD in Law and New Technologies from CIRSFID, University of Bologna, where she was a research fellow and teaching tutor of the Master's programme in Personal Data Processing and Privacy Officers.
She completed advanced courses at the University of Milan in Data Protection and Data Governance, with a focus on Cybersecurity; Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Platforms; Coding for Lawyers and Legal Tech (programming for jurists, smart contracts and legal design); and Cybercrime and Digital Investigations, with a focus on the human factor.
She held the teaching module Regulatory and Economic Aspects (IUS/10) of the Master in Innovation in eXtended Reality (MIXR) at the University of Bologna (academic year 2019/2020).
Her academic and scientific work includes teaching in degree courses, master's programmes and doctoral schools at several universities, the role of subject expert in Legal Informatics and Legal Medicine, and peer reviewer for the Journal of Medical Ethics (British Medical Journal).
She is the author of numerous academic publications and editor of the forthcoming Springer volume «Mind and Technology», on the legal implications of Brain-Computer Interfaces.
She has spoken at more than a hundred training events, conferences and congresses.
On the institutional side, she is a founding member and Vice President of IDBN (Italian Digital Biomanufacturing Network) and a member of the scientific committee of its national congress. She has taken part in roundtables on 3D printing regulation at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre.
She has been registered with the Bologna Bar Association since 2014.
I am a part of all that I have met; yet all experience is an arch wherethro' gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades for ever and forever when I move.
The team
Carlo Papalia
Consultant · Privacy, IP & AI Act
- GDPR & Privacy audit
- Proprietà intellettuale
- AI Act
- Formazione specialistica
A lawyer by training and an athletic coach by vocation, he brings data law to where technology, sport and wellbeing meet. He trains companies to move fast on innovation without tripping over data, trademarks and algorithms.
A GDPR specialist and auditor, he guides companies through compliance with Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and turns an obligation into a competitive advantage. He supports providers and deployers of artificial intelligence systems with their AI Act obligations.
He protects what a business values most: its ideas. Out of court, he handles copyright, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, software, e-Health, e-Commerce, domain names, industrial design and know-how, from registration to negotiation, from opinions to contracts and enforcement.
He brings the same experience to the classroom, training companies and professionals in privacy, intellectual property and the law of new technologies.
Advisors
Davide Golinelli
Physician · MedTech Advisor
- MDR, Software as a Medical Device & AI in healthcare
- Clinical research & evidence
- Health services & market access
A physician specialising in Hygiene and Preventive Medicine, with a PhD, and Associate Professor of Public Health, he is MedTech Advisor to Deep Tech Law. He supports the firm in building tools, in training and in strategic advice from the perspective of a physician, an epidemiologist and a regulatory expert, turning an idea into a solution that is compliant and that the health system can adopt.
Since 2020 he has worked as a clinical expert for a Notified Body. He reviews clinical documentation for CE marking under Regulation (EU) 2017/745 (MDR), including software as a medical device (SaMD) and AI/ML-based devices, with more than 30 active certified medical devices. He knows the questions a Notified Body will ask before it asks them.
He is an appointed expert in the Emilia-Romagna Region's working groups on Medical Devices and IVDs and on the Assessment of Artificial Intelligence technologies in Health, and an adviser to the regional Research and Innovation in Health and Social Care Systems unit on digital health and AI.
For three years he assessed the quality and impact of care models at a health authority serving 1.2 million people (AUSL della Romagna): he knows how the Italian National Health Service evaluates, buys and adopts a technology.
He also knows the other side of the table. He co-founded BOHR, an innovative startup built on blockchain software for the integrity of clinical research data, he is the inventor of two medical device patents, and since 2020 he has mentored and trained health and digital health startups at the G-Factor incubator.
Associate Professor at Link University, where he coordinates the Medicine and Surgery degree programme in Fano, he teaches public health, health services evaluation and artificial intelligence in medicine.
Author of more than 130 scientific papers (H-index 39), he has been included in Stanford's «top 2% Scientists» list since 2022, sits on the Editorial Boards of BMC Health Services Research and Scientific Reports, and is a member and Vice President of the Scientific Committee of the Italian Society of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (SIIAM). He coordinates the CoS-AI project on the cognitive and organisational effects of AI on healthcare professionals.
Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.The method
We don't just interpret the rules. We design systems that make them easier to apply.
True innovation is not a legal subject: it is the ability to turn law from a final document into business infrastructure. Advisory, digital products and equity stakes live together in one system.
Everything runs on kairOS, our operating system with the Neuro Legal Cortex analysis algorithm, and on a horizontal way of working: no rigid hierarchy, different disciplines working on the same problem at the highest level.
The manifesto
A firm the legal market can understand.
Clarity as proof
The right to understand is our trade: that is why this site is the first demonstration of our method, not a brochure. Plain language, reading times, summaries at the top of long content.
Accessibility, declared
We apply to ourselves the WCAG 2.2 AA standard and the European Accessibility Act that firms recommend to clients but rarely meet. It is positioning, not box-ticking.
Systems, not documents
Every opinion that ages is a missed chance to build a tool that lasts. We turn repeatable work into usable products.



