Barrister John Hindess has been Called to the Bermuda Bar after three years’ legal work in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Family and friends, including his wife Leah and three-year-old son William, packed the courtroom on Friday where, before Chief Justice Ian Kawaley, Marshall Diel and Myers managing director Kevin Taylor praised the new lawyer as “industrious, versatile and diligent”.

Mr Taylor noted Mr Hindess’ came with a reputation of “an extremely effective advocate and negotiator in his practice in Vancouver”, whose work spanned privacy, health, administrative and matrimonial law.

A 2005 graduate with honours of Queen’s University, Canada, Mr Hindess obtained his Bachelor of Laws degree at the UK’s University of Warwick in 2008.

He was Called to the Bar in British Columbia in 2011.

Calling Friday the 13th “perhaps the most inauspicious date on the calendar”, Mr Taylor told the court that on the same date in 1967, the US courts established what are now known as the Miranda rights, and Thurgood Marshall became the first black man appointed to the US Supreme Court. Thanking the court, Mr Hindess said his grandfather William Hindess, after whom his son was named, would have been 100 years old that day.

“Friday the 13th is not an unlucky day for me but will always be a day I remember with great fondness and pride,” he added.

Bermuda Bar Council member Elizabeth Christopher called Friday the 13th “the second-most inauspicious day”, adding that she’d been Called to the Bar on April 1, or April Fool’s Day.

Mr Justice Kawaley told Mr Hindess: “I am impressed that you speak to an appreciation of the importance of respecting the ordinary litigant.

“One challenge for lawyers, in a world in which lawyers are comparatively privileged people, is to remember that the legal system is not really about lawyers. It’s about clients.”