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
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