Jacob Turner

Practice Areas

Jacob is a barrister specialising in commercial litigation and arbitration. He has advised individuals, corporates and sovereigns, including Argentina, Greece, Iraq, Venezuela and the UK. His practice areas include finance, civil fraud, business and human rights, aviation and technology.

Jacob has a particular focus on data and AI. He is the author of a widely-cited book ‘Robot Rules: Regulating Artificial Intelligence’ and has acted in several groundbreaking disputes in that field.

His recent work includes acting in the ‘AI Inventor’ case, in which the Supreme Court considered whether an invention devised by an AI program can be registered as a patent. Jacob was instructed by a group of banks in a (now settled) multi-billion-dollar case where the claimants had sought, for the first time in a civil claim, to rely on evidence generated by AI. Jacob acted in a claim brought by Uber and Ola Cabs drivers, successfully challenging the use of algorithmic decision-making to fine the drivers and terminate their contracts. As sole counsel Jacob also successfully defended the first company to be investigated by the ICO for alleged algorithmic bias.

Jacob is a former solicitor-advocate, having qualified in 2014. He has acted as sole counsel in the High Court, an LCIA Arbitration and the Court of Appeal and as junior counsel in the UK Supreme Court and the ICSID Tribunal in Washington DC. He is on the Attorney-General’s Panel of Counsel.

He has been described by clients as “phenomenal” and “an outstanding up-and-coming barrister”.

Jacob’s current and recent work includes:

• Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks UKSC Appeal 2021/0201: Junior counsel for the appellant in UK Supreme Court appeal on the question of whether it is possible to register a patent for an invention devised by an AI system.

• Sharp Corp v Viterra BV UKSC Appeal 2023/0029; [2023] EWCA Civ 7: Junior counsel (led by Leigh-Ann Mulcahy KC) in an appeal to the Supreme Court concerning the operation of s. 69 Arbitration Act 1996, concerning appeals on a point of law.

• Maduro Board of the Central Bank of Venezuela v Guaidó Board of the Central Bank of Venezuela [2023] EWCA Civ 742: Litigation concerning the control of US$2.1 billion of Venezuela’s international reserves. Led by Richard Lissack KC and others. One of The Lawyer’s top 10 appeals of 2023.

• Various Parties v Uber: Challenge in the Dutch Courts by drivers to the use of AI by Uber. Jacob’s clients succeeded in the Amsterdam Court of Appeal. Described in The Guardian as “a test case that could increase transparency for millions of gig economy workers across Europe.”

• Allianz Global Investors GmbH and ors v Deutsche Bank AG London and ors Claim No. CL-2020-000737: Instructed jointly by nine defendant banks in a multi-billion dollar follow-on damages claim in respect of the alleged manipulation of the foreign exchange market. This appears to have been the first litigation in the world where the claimant parties sought to plead and prove their claim using AI-generated evidence.

• Chelluri v Air India [2022] 2 All E.R. (Comm) 172: Sole counsel for the successful defendant airline in the Court of Appeal (Vos MR, Coulson LJ and Stuart-Smith LJ).

Publications

• Author of Robot Rules: Regulating Artificial Intelligence (Palgrave Macmillan).

• Contributing author to The Law of Artificial Intelligence (Sweet & Maxwell).

• Co-author, with Lord Mance, of Privy Council Practice (OUP).

Personal

Jacob has law degrees from Oxford (First Class) and Harvard.