Zila Acosta Grimes is a financial crimes, payments and bank regulatory lawyer with over a decade of experience advising global corporations, financial institutions, fintech and digital asset companies on complex regulatory, compliance, transaction and enforcement matters. Her practice sits at the intersection of anti-money laundering, sanctions, state and federal authorization (including state licensing), and digital asset regulation.
Zila is an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School, teaching a course in anti-money laundering. Prior to joining Linklaters, she worked at another large U.S. law firm and at Goldman Sachs.
She is also a member of the Líderes Board of LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a national nonprofit Latino civil rights legal defense fund, and is deputy president for Region II of the Hispanic National Bar Association. In 2022, Zila was named a Hispanic National Bar Association Top Lawyer Under 40 and received Columbia Law School’s Latinx Law Student Association’s Private Sector Award. In 2017, she received the Puerto Rican Bar Association’s Flor De Maga award as a rising legal star.
While attending Columbia Law School, Zila was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and an article editor for the Columbia Law Review. She is fluent in Spanish.
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