- BA, St John’s College, Cambridge
- LLB, University of Edinburgh
- Admitted as a Scottish advocate in 1965
- Appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1978
- Chancellor, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow from 1998 to 2013
- Honorary Doctor of Laws from Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Strathclyde, Tayside Dundee and BPP (London) Universities
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
- Appointed Knight of the Order of the Thistle by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2009
- Corporate / Commercial Disputes
- Major Projects / Construction
- Oil & Gas
- Tax
Lord Hope of Craighead (David Hope) practised at the Scottish Bar as a member of the Faculty of Advocates for 24 years, becoming a Queen’s Counsel in 1978. He served as Standing Junior Counsel for the Board of Inland Revenue in Scotland from 1974 to 1978 and as an Advocate Depute (a senior prosecutor in the High Court of Justiciary) from 1978 to 1982. From 1986 to 1989 he was Dean of the Faculty of Advocates (Chairman of the Scottish Bar). While at the bar he had an extensive practice in tax, construction and oil and gas law and sat occasionally as a sole arbitrator.
In 1989 Lord Hope was appointed to the bench as Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General of Scotland (the Chief Justice in Scotland). He held these offices until 1996, when he was appointed to sit as a judge in the House of Lords as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. In 2009 he was appointed to be the Second Senior Lord of Appeal in the House of Lords. He became Deputy President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom when that court was established in October 2009. He continued to hold that office until he retired, having sat as an appellate judge for 24 years. For 17 of those years he was a member of the UK’s highest court, and he also sat as a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. During that period he contributed to judgments in a number of appeals which raised issues of arbitration law, including the seminal Dallah v Pakistan and Fiona Trust cases.