Lord Hope of Craighead KT (David Hope) was admitted to practice at the Scottish Bar as a member of the Faculty of Advocates.  He remained in private practice there for 24 years.  During that time he was Standing Junior Counsel in Scotland to the Board of Inland Revenue from 1974 to 1978, became a Queen’s Counsel in 1978, and was an Advocate Depute (prosecuting for the Crown 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).

In 1989 he was appointed direct from the bar to the bench as Lord Justice General of Scotland and Lord President of the Court of Session.  He held these offices for seven years until 1996, when he was appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary.  In 2009 he was appointed to be the second senior Lord of Appeal.  Later that year, when the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords was transferred to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, he became its first Deputy President.  He retired from that office in 2013 and is now active as a Crossbench peer in the House of Lords. 

Between 2015 and 2019 he served as the Convenor of the Crossbench peers.  He is Chief Justice of the Abu Dhabi Global Market Court, which provides parties in a judicial free zone in that emirate with access to a common law commercial court   He is also an international arbitrator, having sat in London, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Trinidad.