12 h 25 min, 2 août 2020 ans - THE TIMES David Sherborne: the perma‑tan barrister representing Johnny Depp

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David Sherborne: the perma‑tan barrister representing Johnny Depp, Meghan and Coleen Rooney

Johnny Depp’s lawyer has a fondness for the limelight that riles his peers, but stars queue up to hire him for their day in court

By Rosie Kinchen

If Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s High Court battle was a performance, there was only one contender for best supporting actor. Depp’s barrister, David Sherborne, is the luvvies’ favourite lawyer, the legal eagle with the treacle tongue.

He has represented public figures ranging from Benazir Bhutto to Kate Moss, Paul Gascoigne and Sir Elton John and he and Depp greeted each other on the courtroom steps like long-lost friends — as few barristers would.

But then “Sherbs”, or “Orange Sherbet” as he is known because of his year-round mahogany tan, does not play by the rules. He wears tight shirts and designer labels. He reportedly has Harry Styles and Hugh Grant on speed dial. He has a reputation for being, in the words of a former colleague, “really quite naff”. And yet, as the rest of us muddle through the pandemic, celebrity court cases are piling up and Sherborne is the busiest media lawyer of all.

He is representing the Duchess of Sussex in her battle against The Mail on Sunday and defending Coleen Rooney in the “Wagatha Christie” defamation case brought by her fellow footballer’s wife Rebekah Vardy. Sherborne is so busy, in fact, that last week his colleague and rival Justin Rushbrooke QC had to stand in for him at a hearing involving the duchess.

So how did a junior barrister with a colourful reputation become the A-listers’ favourite accessory?

Sherborne, in his early fifties, comes from a legal family — his father was a QC — but he is in many ways a rebel. He has a “jocular” style with clients, says the former colleague, and his room in chambers, unlike the other stuffy ones, has a “huge glass table, a Nespresso machine and art on the walls”. He is habitually photographed with famous clients and often wears his wig on the steps of the court — widely seen as another breach of etiquette.

A former colleague at Sherborne’s 5RB chambers in central London said his peers found his antics extremely irritating. “He likes to present a fun, outgoing persona and is very limelight-seeking. All the other barristers in chambers were hyper-critical of him breaking the rules,” said the one-time colleague.

Sherborne has been cultivating this niche for years, racking up substantial victories. He represented Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones when they successfully sued Hello! magazine in 2003, and Max Mosley in his defamation case against the News of the World in 2008. A person who saw him representing the duchess in a virtual hearing in April said he lived up to his reputation for flamboyance. Sherborne, his lockdown mane even more luxuriant than usual, was “very theatrical in his delivery” and “flirty with the judge”.

Rushbrooke, 55, who is a close friend of Boris Johnson, joined the chambers at about the same time as Sherborne. Both read classics at Oxford. Yet while Rushbrooke became a QC — the highest rank a lawyer can have — in 2013 Sherborne has yet to do so. There is speculation about why. One reason could be financial: QCs’ pay packets take an initial hit because their higher charges as the elite among barristers lose them clients. It is also possible that his reputation has got in the way.

Sherborne’s life is as colourful as his celebrity clients’. He has two children with his first wife and one with his second — whom he met when she was a junior solicitor at the media law firm Harbottle & Lewis.

His current partner is Carine Patry Hoskins. Their romance was controversial. She was a junior barrister assisting the Leveson inquiry into press standards in 2013; he was lead counsel for victims of press intrusion. But it emerged they had flown to Santorini a few days after the end of the public hearings “to discuss the possibility of a future relationship”, leading our columnist Camilla Long to ask: “Who goes to the hottest, sweatiest and most shagadelic of all the Greek islands and only talks about having sex?”

The “Loverson affair” raised questions about conflict of interest but doesn’t seem to have had an impact on Sherborne’s caseload. “He must have known all those pictures would get him in the papers and catapult his profile,” said another lawyer.

Judges are not always so enamoured. According to the person observing the virtual hearing: “Mr Justice Warby smiled wryly a few times at Sherborne’s efforts to suck up to him but I didn’t get the impression he was taken in.” The judge came down against Sherborne and left Meghan with nearly £68,000 in costs after the battle’s first round.

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