BY HIS analytical attention to detail and his consummate preparation for his cases, Michael Hill became a leading advocate at the Criminal Bar, where he practised for 45 years. Unable to do anything by halves, he devoted himself to his work and to his profession with an enthusiasm which was daunting. In so doing he established a reputation for hard work and as a forceful advocate who fearlessly stood his client’s corner whether for the prosecution or the defence.

His formidable reputation as a courtroom advocate was matched by the breadth of his capacity to take on work on behalf of the Bar generally and the Criminal Bar in particular. The successes and failures of the courtroom have the transience of any coup d’estime but Hill’s success in introducing new methods of training advocates and promoting sensible reforms of criminal law domestically and internationally will have lasting effects.

Eliot Michael Hill was brought up in Essex and educated at Bancroft’s School and Brasenose, Oxford, where he read law. In 1958 he was called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn, where he was later to become a Bencher. His pupillage was undertaken with two of the leading advocates of the time, Morris (later Mr Justice) Finer and Basil (Lord) Wigoder, and in 1959 he became a tenant in the chambers from which he practised until his death.

The head of chambers was Edward Cussen, one of the team of Nuremberg prosecutors who instilled his chambers with a regard for the highest standard of conduct, which Hill was stoutly to maintain as junior Treasury Counsel at the Old Bailey from 1974 to 1977 and as senior Treasury Counsel from 1977 to 1979 and thereafter as silk.

As Treasury Counsel, Hill prosecuted in many notorious criminal cases of the 1970s including a number of terrorist cases. As junior to Michael (later Lord) Havers in the Guildford Four prosecution, it fell to Hill to set out the approach adopted by the prosecution when the case was examined by the May inquiry into the miscarriage of justice. He was made a Recorder in 1977 and took silk in 1979. Thereafter, he prosecuted and defended in a succession of leading cases, including the six-month murder trial at Lancaster Castle involving a handless corpse which was then Britain’s most expensive criminal trial; the Cyprus spy case at which a group of RAF men were acquitted of passing secrets; the Maxwell trial, and the Milford Haven harbour pollution prosecution.

It was Hill’s reputation as a relentless and painstaking cross-examiner that led to his brief as counsel to the Daily Star in the celebrated 1987 libel case brought by Jeffrey Archer. It was not surprising that when Archer was prosecuted for perjury in 2001, it was Hill’s cross- examination of Archer in 1987 — based on his instinctive belief that the alibi evidence was false — that was the essence of the prosecution.

In 1972 Hill, together with Basil Wigoder, Lord Hutchinson, John Hazan and Richard Lowry, had helped to found the Criminal Bar Association. He became its first secretary, and later vice-chairman and chairman (1982-86), and helped to make it the largest specialist Bar association. Its aim was to contribute to the burgeoning debate on criminal law reform and to promote the role of the independent trial advocate. This experience led Hill to become a founder member of the International Society for the Reform of the Criminal Law, and he was approaching the end of his presidency of that body when he died.

This role fired his enthusiasm for Africa and Australia. But his love of travel had an underlying purpose: to promote professional education and training and the role of the advocate. It was on one such visit to Australia that Hill became a passionate devotee of Australian methods of teaching advocacy, and he encouraged Gray’s Inn to introduce the new methods. It was Hill’s ability to attract leading advocates and judges to participate in the teaching that overcame the Bar’s innately conservative distrust of novelty, and the other Inns were soon to follow.

When the Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law, it was inevitable that the Bar Council should turn to Hill to draw up, energise and administer a training scheme to ensure that all barristers in criminal practice had been trained in its application.

His kindness and generosity as an adviser and mentor were experienced by many at the start of their careers, and he became a much respected head of chambers. He was an unlikely but enthusiastic horseman, keeping a horse at the livery in Richmond Park for many years and hunting with the Old Berks. He also loved opera and jazz, playing bridge, fishing and watching sport. He was devoted to Kitty, his wife, and their son and two daughters, all of whom sustained him during his demanding career and through his acute illness.

Hill never contemplated retirement. The excitement of adversarial advocacy and the compulsion to overwork were necessities of his life. It was typical that, shortly before his death, he played a major part in exposing prosecution failures and inadequacies in a money-laundering trial in the Cayman Islands which collapsed in spectacular fashion.

Hill married, in 1965, Kathleen (Kitty) Hordern, who survives him with their son and two daughters.