The suspension took effect at midnight on June 14, according to the register of disciplinary action maintained by the Office of the Legal Services Commissioner. A post from Mr Waterstreet's Instagram account on June 13, showing his wig in an Uber Eats bag. Credit:Instagram Mr Waterstreet filed Supreme Court proceedings against the association on June 11, asking the court to set aside the decision to suspend him and reinstate his practising certificate. According to documents filed by Mr Waterstreet in court, the association relied on a legal provision allowing a regulatory body to immediately suspend a barrister from practice if a complaint has been made about their conduct and it "considers the immediate suspension ... is warranted in the public interest on the ground of the seriousness of the alleged conduct". Such a suspension is allowed "whether or not an investigation of the complaint has begun or been completed".

Mr Waterstreet has been at the centre of a series of controversies in recent years, including allegations of sexual harassment made against him by a number of female paralegals. The allegations, vehemently denied by Mr Waterstreet, led the University of Sydney to ban him last year from advertising on its online careers hub. Loading The Bar Association intervened last year to stop Mr Waterstreet appearing on an episode of the ABC's Q&A program on the #MeToo movement. In a statement at the time, the association said its then-president, Arthur Moses, SC, had advised Mr Waterstreet it was neither "appropriate" nor "prudent" for him to appear on the panel. Mr Waterstreet also caused the first trial of disgraced former detectives Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara to be aborted in July 2015 after he made a reference in front of the jury to Rogerson "killing two or three people when he was in the police force".

Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey Bellew said at the time that he had no alternative but to discharge the jury, two days into the trial, because of the potential prejudice to Rogerson. Mr Waterstreet was acting for McNamara at the time. Both McNamara and Rogerson were subsequently convicted of murdering university student Jamie Gao and stealing 2.78 kilograms of the drug ice that Mr Gao had brought to a meeting in May 2014. The empanelling of a new jury, scheduled a fortnight later, was then delayed after Justice Bellew was informed of a post from Mr Waterstreet's Instagram account featuring the hashtags #bluemurder and #teammcnamara. This appeared to be a reference to the ABC miniseries Blue Murder, about Rogerson's relationship with notorious criminal Arthur "Neddy" Smith in the 1970s and '80s when he was a Kings Cross detective. Mr Waterstreet told Justice Bellew he was not responsible for the post. In a statement to the Herald, the Bar Association said it was "unable to comment on current proceedings in which it is involved, nor is it able to comment upon the status of any disciplinary action against a practitioner pursuant to the provisions of the Legal Profession Uniform Laws".