He was a brother of John Robinson, solicitor and founder of the Dublin Daily Express, a pro-Conservative and Unionist newspaper with a very wide circulation.
Sir Joseph Napier, 1st Baronet, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, was a cousin.
In 1859 he became Law Adviser to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, no doubt on his cousin Napier's recommendation.
Critics said that due to family influence, he would soon be made Attorney General for Ireland, despite an abundance of more qualified candidates.
He was generally considered to be a fine lawyer, although a bitter anonymous attack on him in the "Irish Quarterly Review" in 1859, evidently written by a political opponent, vilified him as a greedy and grasping man of mediocre abilities who owed everything to his family connections.