James Turner

Tell us your story:

"I am Knowledge Counsel for the cross-disciplinary Fintech, Market Infrastructure & Payments practice at law firm Travers Smith, meaning that I keep the team and our clients up to speed with the rapid (often dizzyingly so) legal, regulatory and technological developments in the fintech world. That's my day job - for my gay job, I am part of the steering committee for the firm's LGBTQ+ network, and in that role I have recorded video pieces, written articles and taken part in panels on a range of issues relevant to being a LGBTQ+ person in the law.

I have been fortunate to have worked with payments and fintech clients almost my entire career, dating all the way back to helping a major consumer lender roll out an entirely digital point of sale signing process back in 2005 (at the time seen as a huge step forward). Along the way I've worked in 4 law firms, two big banks, as the only lawyer at a private equity-backed fintech scale-up, the FCA and the Law Commission. Now I get to work with some of the most exciting and disruptive businesses in digital assets, financial market infrastructure, open banking and more, on some of their most challenging legal issues."

Impact:

"The word "network" has many meanings (and a software engineer and a lawyer could easily misunderstand one another!), but LGBTQ+ networks have been a central part of my career journey, dating back all the way to my 18-year-old self at university.
I am an extrovert (in the correct sense of that word) and have always sought both to connect with people and to forge connections between others. Everywhere I have worked or studied, I have thrown myself into (founding, where necessary) LGBTQ+ networks. What goes alongside that for me is that I have always been entirely open about my sexual orientation as a gay man; it's prominent on my CV and I speak about my life totally openly.

In 2021 I had the honour of contributing a Pride Month article about my journey to The Lawyer magazine, and the response was fantastic, and reminded me how powerful our stories can be.

I vividly recall two particular moments I'm proud of - one was helping to encourage one of my household name employers to feature a male couple in a TV ad for an innovative new service (the first time a bank had done so on TV); the second was helping a very recently-out gay male colleague march at Pride with his parents. Different ends of the spectrum in terms of publicity; equal in terms of pride."

Advice:

"My advice has always been quite simple: be out. Observe how (straight) people talk about their lives and do the same.
We are long past the point at which LGBTQ+ people in fintech (or the law) should expect to hide, or apologise, or ask to be "tolerated".
No one can claim to be an innovator if they can't cope with people's core identities."