I have been a criminal advocate since I qualified as a solicitor and was admitted to the roll in June 1974. I became a duty solicitor at the inception of the scheme run by the Law Society in 1975. Since 1981 I have been largely self-employed, running my own firms, with the exception of the period from 1989 to 1996, when I was a Senior Crown Prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service in Norfolk.
In June 2003 I moved down to Brighton and ran my own firm down there for 6 years before returning to Norwich in late 2009. During that period I had the good fortune to “acquire” a VHCC terrorism case that ran for three years, culminating in a 6 month trial in the Old Bailey, at the end of which my client was acquitted of all charges by the unanimous decision of the jury. I also had conduct of a murder trial with six defendants, my client being acquitted. In November 2008 an appeal against conviction and sentence that I had pursued via the CCRC in the Court of Criminal Appeal for nearly 5 years came to hearing, resulting in the reversal of my client’s conviction and a removal of the s*x offenders order that had been imposed on my client. In delivering the judgement of the Court the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, was kind enough to add the following: “We should not leave the case without expressing our respect for the tenacious and determined efforts made by Mr Michael Cole, the appellant's solicitor at trial, on behalf of his client to secure this favourable outcome. It is obvious that he applied considerable energies and resources on an unfunded basis. His conduct was in the
best tradition of his profession."
