Why Lord Hope never planned for quite such a glorious career

As the-then David Hope completed the first year of his law degree at Edinburgh University, he was faced with a dilemma. Having been discouraged from entering legal practice by the poor performance of his father's law firm, the young David Hope successfully applied to join the civil service.

At this point he had already rejected the idea of using his classics degree from Cambridge to teach or enter industry and a concrete offer from the Scottish Home and Health Department now lay in his hands – but a subsequent request to postpone taking up the position until he had completed his legal studies had been turned down.

"I then had a very awkward choice, between a job that was on offer, or a rather uncertain future of getting a law degree and not knowing what to do with it," he tells The Scotsman.

"I decided I would rather do the law, and I was persuaded that the best thing, if you want to be independent, is become an advocate. It wasn't planned, and if the civil service had said yes, I probably would have done that."

The law's gain has been the civil service's loss, and his potential bosses in the government may have later wished they had acceded to his request as they witnessed their prospective employee rise through the ranks of the Faculty of Advocates to become Dean, on to the Scottish judiciary and beyond as he was summoned to London to become a law lord, and later, a founding judge in the UK Supreme Court.

Along the way he has picked up numerous other accolades, including the Order of the Thistle, given to him by the Queen on St Andrew's Day last year, and later this month he will be honoured yet further, as he collects a lifetime achievement award at the Scott & Co Scottish Legal Awards.

At 71, Lord Hope insists he has no thoughts of taking things easy – "this isn't a retirement thing at all," he laughs.

Now that he works in the newest court building in the land, a structure festooned in technology to help things run more smoothly, it is with a wry smile that he sits in his Edinburgh home and thinks back to his initial dealings as an advocate in 1965. Plucking his first fee book from the rows of weighty literature that line the walls, he recalls: "It was very, very slow. We were expected to write down what you had received. My first six months occupied two thirds of a page and totalled 88.

"I don't think I got into court until March, the year after I was called."

At that time the Faculty of Advocates numbered 130 and, with just 15 judges, the volume of work was much less than it is today. He began to pick up work doing undefended divorce cases and reparation in injury cases. "The big commercial cases just were not there," Lord Hope adds.

Looking back, he credits two things that made a difference to his career. One was the discovery of North Sea oil, that caused an explosion in work. The other was the mentorship of James Mackay – now Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the winner of the lifetime achievement award at last year's programme.

"He was a very generous man with an amazing practice which had all sorts of work. I found myself appearing with him in lots of extremely interesting cases. I owe him a huge amount. You learn a great deal as a junior from the way your senior works and he was a quite astonishing advocate, the way he was able to present things."

A month after taking silk in 1978, Lord Hope was asked by the Lord Advocate to become an advocate depute, despite having barely any experience of criminal work: "You really couldn't turn it down," he laughs.

He fulfilled that role for four years, a period he now describes now as "very stimulating" and vital to his later career. "I couldn't have done without those years," he notes, pointing out that when he was asked to become Scotland's top judge he had little in the way of experience running a trial, having been elevated from his role as Dean of the Faculty directly to the appeal courts in 1989.

Intriguingly, Lord Hope's time as Dean, which began in 1986, coincided with a period of court reform that has echoes of a current debate. During his tenure, tensions emerged over the rights of audience in Scotland's higher courts, a theme that re-emerged earlier this year with the instigation of the Thomson Review. In Lord Hope's time, the tension came as a lobby fought to allow solicitor advocates to appear before judge: "Naturally, it was my job as Dean to resist the change," he smiles. After becoming Lord President in 1989, he found himself fighting the battle from the other side: "Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister and she was putting through changes in the profession removing restrictive practices. My job as Lord President was, in effect, a complete reverse of what I had been doing as Dean, because I had to put through the changes."

Speaking about his time as Lord President, it is clear Lord Hope looks back on it with much fondness. At the time, the role of Scotland's top judge was much more high profile than it is today, with the media glare very much focused on the judiciary in the absence of a Scottish Parliament. At the same time, the political tension between the Conservative government and an increasingly hostile Scottish public meant the Scottish judiciary became celebrated bulwarks of Scottish identity. This manifested itself in a public spat with then Scottish secretary Michael Forsyth, who wanted to impose a UK-wide Tory criminal policy in Scotland. "There was a certain amount of tension between us," Lord Hope says. "This was a political issue, and in a way I was lucky, because the political climate, by that stage, was rather anti-Tory, and I was seen as a champion of our criminal system – 'you can't meddle with our criminal system without discussing it with me'. The press rather liked that."

It was with some degree of soul-searching that Lord Hope eventually made his way south to take his seat in the Lords in 1996. He notes that many others before him had been reluctant to go, given the upheaval in their life it entailed. "In a way it was a relief," he says, "because the job was tough as Lord President. It was demanding administratively, but the work in London is demanding in a different way – it is less stress, but intellectually very stretching."

Having grown up in Edinburgh, and apart from his time at Cambridge and in the army as part of national service, not spent too long away from the capital, the move was a major change, and one that became more challenging as he took the lead in the design and set-up of the UK Supreme Court that opened in October. "It was enjoyable to a degree," he says. "But there were disagreements. You get 12 independently minded people who have different ideas about how the court should be designed so there was a lot of negotiation."

But Lord Hope seems delighted with the results. Despite professing to miss the activity in the Lords, he praises the openness of the new court building, its accessibility to the public and the welcome it affords visitors.

He has come a long way. So, if we had gone to the young David Hope and told him his career was going to take him to the position of second most senior judge in the UK, what would his reaction have been?

"I would have been astonished," he maintains. "It was an unplanned career."

The Scott & Co Scottish Legal Awards lunch takes place on 19 March. Limited tickets are available. Book by visiting www.thelegalawards.com