Early Life and Legal Practice
Born in Highgate, London, the eldest son of 7 children of Benjamin Thomas, a Lloyd's underwriter and Katherine née Edwards, he attended Highgate School and Trinity College, Oxford, graduating in classics (1892) and literae humaniores (1894). MacKinnon was called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1897 and became a pupil of Thomas Edward Scrutton where he was a contemporary of James Richard Atkin, later to become Lord Atkin. When Scrutton became a QC in 1901, MacKinnon benefited from Scrutton's former junior practice in commercial law. MacKinnon's brother, Sir Percy Graham MacKinnon (1872–1956) was, from time to time, chairman of Lloyd's and his family connections helped build his practice.
MacKinnon married Frances Massey in 1906 and the couple had two children. He became a KC in 1914 and found the circumstances of World War I led him to an extensive practice in prize law. The war also generated many complex contractual disputes and MacKinnon developed a reputation for handling such cases with skill. Many issues such as frustration of contract attracted his attention and his pen.
He began to establish a reputation as a jurist and to advise the government on mercantile law, especially its international dimension.
Read more about this topic: Frank Douglas Mac Kinnon
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, legal and/or practice:
“Even today . . . experts, usually male, tell women how to be mothers and warn them that they should not have children if they have any intention of leaving their side in their early years. . . . Children don’t need parents’ full-time attendance or attention at any stage of their development. Many people will help take care of their needs, depending on who their parents are and how they chose to fulfill their roles.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid- twentieth century.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)