Tayla Pinto
Tayla PintoAssociate

Tayla Pinto worked at Michalsons until July 2025. She merges her Constitutional and Administrative Law expertise with specialised knowledge in digital and emerging technology regulation. Her public law foundation offers clients valuable insights when navigating complex tech landscapes.

Specialising in IT contracts and AI governance, Tayla crafts and negotiates agreements while delivering strategic legal opinions aligned with commercial objectives. As facilitator for the Trustworthy AI Programme and manager of the Artificial Intelligence Act website, she stays at the cutting edge of AI regulation.

Drawing on her legal research and project management background, Tayla excels in cross-functional advisory work. She integrates legal, technical and business perspectives to help clients manage risk and thrive in the digital ecosystem.

Read her insights.

University of Cape Town: LLB, 2017 – 2020

  • Research paper title: Public law considerations in the digital economy: a response to “Competition in the Digital Economy” by the Competition Commission

University of Cape Town: LLM, 2021 – 2023

  • Thesis title: Substitution in the South Africa context – constitutional principals in action.

Stockholm University: Summer school, 2021

  • EU law in brief
  • Law and economics

Tayla Pinto enjoys reading, listening to music and spending time with her family.

Tayla is a well-rounded legal practitioner who has paired her legal knowledge with extra-legal skills to position herself to present the law and legal solutions in a manner that is simple and practical. Tayla has an astute ability to understand her clients, how their organisations work and their offerings. Tayla has worked on a variety of multi-faceted projects requiring her to apply not just legal insights but also commercial and technical insights.

Tayla mainly practices in the areas of information security, artificial intelligence and ITGS contracts. Within these practice areas, she has worked on commercial contracts, legal opinions and legal design projects.

Before joining Michalsons, Tayla worked as a project manager at the iNtaka Centre for Law and Technology at the University of Cape Town. Here she drove the development of iNtaka’s research agenda and strategy. Her work involved building a network across Africa to facilitate collaboration in the legal tech space. This included:

  • successfully piloting an African division of a global fellowship dedicated to betting on talent early to solve hard problems,
  • creating a platform and space for roleplayers to come together to share learnings and experiences,
  • developing the Legal Tech Lab to encourage the exploration, experimentation and development of legal tech, and
  • leading the iNtaka teams’ integration into the legal tech ecosystem.

Tayla also worked as a senior research assistant and project coordinator at the Democratic Governance and Rights Unit. This role saw her working with the National Prosecuting Authority, the International Association of Women Judges (South African Chapter), AfricanLii, the judiciary and civil society to improve access to justice.