Bermuda Executive Wins UK Legal Award

21 January 2008 pr004.08

The tropical paradise of Bermuda is home to the very first recipient of the Institute of Legal Executives (ILEX) top honour, the President’s Award.

The Award, in the gift of the ILEX President, and sponsored by MCA Legal, the specialist recruitment service for legal firms, recognises the legal executive who has given outstanding service to ILEX and the legal community and represents the ILEX values and ethos. It goes to David Addington, who is a Legal Executive with the Hamilton firm of Mello Jones & Martin. He wins a commemorative trophy along with cheque for £500.

David has had a long and distinguished career in law. He has been a legal executive for over 35 years, 30 of them in the idyllic setting of Bermuda and is a well-respected lawyer in the island community.

Besides being an established litigator and litigation manager, he is a qualified Mediator, a Fellow of the Institute of Arbitrators and a member of the Chartered Management Institute. He has worked tirelessly to promote ILEX in Bermuda, establishing the ILEX Bermuda branch in 1986, becoming chairman in 1990. He has been instrumental in paving the way for ILEX courses on the island and has for several years acted as a lecturer at the College of Bermuda.

He has been determined in his aim to have the Legal Executive (Registration) Act passed by the Bermudian Parliament which would officially recognise Legal Executives on the island and it looks as if this long held ambition will be achieved shortly, possibly this year.

David plans to continue to work with Mello Jones & Martin whilst pursuing his other, unpaid, calling as an ordained Anglican clergyman.

“David had been a leading light in Bermudian legal circles for many years,” said ILEX President, Lesley Graham. “Promoting Legal Executives at every opportunity, whilst continually demonstrating skill and exceptional commitment to his job, often at personal cost I cannot think of a more fitting tribute to a long and successful career in law that epitomises what ILEX stands for.”

“I feel very blessed to have been given the ILEX President’s Award, said David. ” The date on my Fellowship’s Certificate (a little faded like me) is 1^st November 1972. Before then, I had learned at the feet of the old Managing Clerks who included such luminaries as the Barrington twins (then in their 70s) who were known respectively as Chancery Barrington and Divorce Barrington. I inherited Chancery Barrington’s chair and it is on their behalf and all the others who were working at that time to bring the Institute of Legal Executives into being that I can gratefully and fondly accept this award.”

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