A High Court judge should not have replaced a suspension imposed by a Bar disciplinary tribunal on a barrister jailed for causing death by dangerous driving with no order at all, a KC has argued. Chloe Carpenter KC, based at Fountain Court Chambers, said the judge should either have fined the barrister or imposed a short suspension which would already have been served by the time of his appeal.
Hamish Hickey, called to the bar in 2008, admitted causing death by dangerous driving. He was jailed for 23 months in November 2024 and was released on licence in August 2025. A Bar disciplinary tribunal suspended him for 11 months in November 2025, the suspension timed to expire at the same time as his custodial sentence in September 2026.
In an ex tempore ruling in April this year, Mrs Justice Dias allowed Mr Hickey’s appeal against the suspension. She did not remit the case to a fresh tribunal because she believed a fine would not be fair or proportionate. Dias J was reported as saying that the public expects high standards of barristers but that this expectation relates to their professional life and competence. She noted that the general public has no legitimate expectation that barristers have higher driving standards than anybody else.
Speaking in a podcast from City law firm CM Murray, Ms Carpenter said she believed the High Court was right to overturn the tribunal’s suspension and agreed that its ruling was not sufficiently reasoned. However, she did not agree that there should have been no order at all. The right order would have been a fine or a further short suspension of something in the order of four months, she said. In that case, the suspension would have been served by the time of the appeal.
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She also disagreed with some of the reasoning in Dias J’s judgment. The public has a general expectation that lawyers abide by the law, she explained. Lawyers are held to a higher standard in complying with the law than ordinary members of the public. This distinction is not just about technical skill in court but about the broader moral contract between the profession and society. The judge’s ruling effectively erased that distinction for a criminal act that caused a death, treating the professional discipline as completely separate from the criminal punishment. It creates a strange gap where the legal system punishes the act but the regulatory body offers no consequence.
Andrew Pavlovic, a partner at CM Murray, commented that Mr Hickey received a custodial sentence for dangerous driving partly because he had been caught speeding on previous occasions. He said it is obviously very tragic and unlucky but that there was a history there.
On the separate issue of whether solicitors should notify the Solicitors Regulation Authority before they are charged with a criminal offence, for example when they are arrested, Mr Pavlovic said the question is whether they are caught by their wider obligation to report facts or matters capable of amounting to a serious breach. He said this could result in some cases in a bit of a tension. In relation to sexual misconduct, the guidance warns that the SRA may investigate matters even if the police have decided not to take action.
He went on to say it is not as straightforward as you think, in terms of whether you can sit back and wait to see if the police are going to do anything. He added that the SRA and the police had signed a memorandum of understanding and that the issue definitely requires some thought.