262 THE ADVOCATE
VOL. 80 PART 2 MARCH 2022
the firm. Like at the soccer pitch lecture, younger lawyers could expect to
receive the English language and punctuation lecture, as well as the ethics
lecture from Len as part of his mentoring.
He was a disciplinarian, who considered it important for lawyers to be
properly attired, to be and look professional and to always do the right thing.
He enjoyed a good laugh. One of Len’s pieces of advice during social
lunches or dinners of his law firm family was put this way: “If you are going
to drink gin during the day, be careful to let your clients know you are
drunk and not just stupid.”
I practised with Len for close to 40 years, first as a junior associate, then
as a partner and later as a managing partner. In all that time, I recall no
cross words or even cross thoughts from or about Len. It was a privilege and
an enjoyment to have spent so much professional time working in the common
practice of law with “LCD”. He is missed.
Jim Taylor, Q.C.
James Wallace Lawrence
Jamie Lawrence died on April 25, 2021. Those in the
profession who knew him will remember that he
practised at Lawrence & Shaw (now McMillan LLP),
the firm his father, James Lyle Lawrence, founded
with Ian Shaw in 1921. He was known variously as
Jamie, Jimmy or Jim.
Jamie was born in Vancouver in August 1930. His
sister, Nan, was born three years later. Their mother, Kathleen Margaret
(née Peck), who had been a French teacher at Prince of Wales High School,
died in 1935 of complications from the Spanish flu. His father then married
Mary MacKay. She was a cousin of Peter MacKay, the sometime Conservative
Cabinet minister. Mary contended that Peter couldn’t pronounce his
surname properly. He pronounced “MacKay” to rhyme with “hay”, whereas
she claimed the proper pronunciation rhymes with “buy”. Jamie’s half-
sister, Susan, was born in 1941.
The Lawrence family hailed from Scotland, specifically Fettercairn, in
Aberdeenshire, Scotland. In the mid-19th century, some of the family