After working in the office of his uncle, a solicitor who specialised in maritime law, Roche read as a pupil with Scott Fox of the North-Eastern Circuit.

Roche became a King's Counsel in 1912, and henceforth concentrated almost exclusively on commercial case and arbitration in London, acquiring one of the largest practices in the field at the bar.

[3] In 1917, Roche was appointed to the High Court of Justice (King's Bench Division), on which occasion he was created a Knight Bachelor.

[4] On 14 October 1935 to fill a vacancy he was made a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and created a life peerage as Baron Roche, of Chadlington in the County of Oxford.

This formed the basis of the Justices of the Peace Act 1949, introduced by Morrison's successor, James Chuter Ede.