Photo of Steven Baker

Steven is a commercial lawyer who has a broad practice in international and domestic dispute resolution. He helps clients in English higher court proceedings and overseas.

Steven also has a large international arbitration practice with experience of a wide range of arbitral institutions, including HKIAC, ICC, LCIA, LMAA, UNCITRAL and SIAC.

Steven is ranked in the leading legal directories for commercial dispute resolution and banking litigation. He has been described in the directories as “a tremendous litigator – he is very clever and efficient and handles multiple clients well”, “very thoughtful, very into the detail, but equally takes a very commercial stance” and “very good at running complex commercial disputes, very bright and a pleasure to deal with”.

Over the past 30 years, Steven has been heavily involved in advising upon and resolving disputes in the technology, communications, defence, financial services and energy sectors.

Steven is also the co-author of a leading text on technology and outsourcing disputes (a 2nd edition now having been commissioned and due to be published in July 2023): IT Contracts and Dispute Management: A Practitioner's Guide to the Project Lifecycle, published in March 2018 (Edward Elgar Publishing, ISBN: 9781784710118).

The UK Supreme Court handed down its much-anticipated decision in the Lloyd v Google LLC [2021] UKSC 50 case on 10 November 2021 restricting claimants’ ability to bring data privacy class actions in the UK under the (now repealed) Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA 1998). This decision will be persuasive (though not binding) with respect to similar class actions brought under the (in-force) UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018 (collectively, the UK GDPR). This decision will not directly impact litigation brought under the EU General Data Protection Regulation in EU member states.

In the recent and significant Warren v DSG Retail Ltd [2021] EWHC 2168 (QB) decision the High Court in England clarified the limited circumstances in which claims for breach of confidence, misuse of private information and the tort of negligence might be advanced by individuals for compensation for distress relating to a cyber-security breach where the proposed defendant was itself a victim of a third-party cyber-attack. The decision has made it harder to bring free standing/non-statutory cyber-security breach claims in England and Wales where the proposed defendant has not positively caused the breach, and has also brought into question how such claims may be funded going forward (particularly, via “After-the-Event insurance” (“ATE insurance”)).