Andrew  Hopper QC
Andrew Hopper is a solicitor and  Queen’s Counsel; still a rare combination. He was admitted a solicitor in  1972 and from 1988 has practised on his own account in a niche practice  concerned with professional regulation and discipline, principally in relation  to solicitors.
He was appointed Silk in 2001,  the fifth solicitor Silk to be appointed and the first outside the City of London.
He is regarded by many as the foremost  expert of his generation on the law and practice related to the regulation of  solicitors.
He is the co-author, with Gregory Treverton-Jones  QC, of the Solicitor's Handbook, now in its fifth edition, written with the benefit of over thirty years experience of this area of law. With the same co-author he has written a guide to Outcomes-Focused Regulation as adopted by the Solicitors Regulation Authority in October 2011.
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The Handbook is written from the perspective of the practitioner,  rather than that of the regulator.
He is joint General Editor of Cordery on Legal Services, the principal authority on the law and practice affecting the regulation of the supply of legal services, including all aspects of the professional obligations and liabilities of solicitors and the other legal professions, and
He is a consulting editor to the fifth edition  of Halsbury’s Laws of England on the  subject of solicitors.
He first acted for a solicitor before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in  1973; between 1979 and 2002 he advised and acted for the Law Society in  disciplinary and regulatory proceedings, in matters before the Tribunal, the  Divisional Court, the Court of Appeal and before the Master of the Rolls, and  was the principal prosecutor in the Tribunal for over a decade. He now has an  exclusively defence practice, but also acts for the Solicitors Disciplinary  Tribunal itself when it becomes involved as a party to litigation, principally  in claims for judicial review.
He has a unique library of all  the published decisions of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal from  approximately 1989, and many from before that time, in an electronically  searchable database.
He has acted for a number of  other regulators and has advised on regulatory systems, in this country and  abroad.
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Andrew Hopper QC is selective as  to the cases he will accept. He has to be satisfied that he will add value for  the benefit of the client, and his involvement cannot routinely be justified on  the basis of cost. His office is not open to the public and his telephone  numbers are unlisted. The details of his own practice (as opposed to those of  firms to which he is a consultant) do not appear in any legal or other  directory. This site has been established in order to provide information as to  the single most convenient means of contacting him, which is by e-mail to andrew.hopper@ahqc.com.
He is generally prepared to read  papers and to give a provisional view, and confirm whether he would accept  formal instruct