Melissa Fai

Technology law
Privacy law

LLB (Hons) and BA (Macquarie University)
Admitted as a solicitor of the NSW Supreme Court.

Melissa is recognised in Best Lawyers 2022 for IT Law and Privacy and Data Security Law; by Legal 500 as a Leading Individual for Data Protection; and is recommended in Doyle’s Guide for Technology, Media & Telecommunications.

Melissa is a member of the Privacy and Data Law Committee of the NSW Law Society.

Gilbert + Tobin
Melissa Fai

Melissa is a Partner in the Tech + IP group of Gilbert + Tobin. She has spent the majority of her career at Gilbert + Tobin working in technology law, however, she also spent a long stint at Linklaters in London working as a Managing Associate.

Melissa is a data and privacy specialist who dedicates a significant part of her practice to regularly advising clients on privacy and data protection compliance obligations and to considering how clients’ use of technology and data, and the commercialisation of data, may be structured to meet their legislative requirements and also the best contractual outcome.

Melissa’s privacy and data experience includes:

• assisting organisations to assess and comply with their privacy obligations, particularly businesses in highly regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare and telecommunications, or businesses undertaking new and innovative structures to capitalise on their data assets. This includes advising on federal, state and health-records legislation;
• advising on commercialisation of data and privacy-related issues in a transactional context. Such transactions include cloud computing and other offshoring arrangements, data sharing and analytics licensing arrangements, M&A, insolvencies and complex transactions generally; and
• advising on privacy failures and data breach issues, including on reporting obligations to, and investigations conducted by, privacy regulators.

Melissa’s practice also involves advising on complex outsourcing, IT and related procurement or supply transactions, from both a customer and supplier perspective, including IT and digital transformation projects and business process outsourcing.