Susan Moore-Williams was called to the Bar yesterday during a Supreme Court ceremony which Crown counsel Leighton Rochester described as a Guyanese conspiracy.

Mrs. Moore-Williams' father, Justice Stanley Moore from the Bahamas, got a front row seat for the event as Chief Justice Austin Ward allowed his long-time friend to sit with him on the bench.

His daughter was the first Guyanese female to be called to the Bar in Bermuda, noted Mr. Rochester. He added that he had seen Mrs. Moore-Williams in action in court as an advocate for the Women's Resource Centre and said she had "a fire in her belly'' with respect to her clients.

Mrs. Moore-Williams received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of West Indies and completed her legal studies in Trinidad and Tobago. In October, 1991, she became a practising attorney in Guyana.

Mrs. Moore-Williams was the president of the Guyana Association of Woman Lawyers from 1995 to 1997.

Bermuda Bar Association president Richard Hector described how she met her Bermudian husband Sinclair Alan Williams in Guyana and of his proposal, on one knee, under a waterfall.

Mrs. Moore-Williams said: "It is with pride and pleasure that I make this application before my father. Although we are of the same profession, he allowed me without pressure or bias to assume my own path.'' Mr. Justice Moore said: "I have dreamed, even before Susan was born, that one of my children would choose law as a profession and be admitted to the Bar.

"It is an emotional moment for me to be surrounded by people who knew me in my earliest youth.'' He noted that the legal profession in the Eastern Caribbean was slowly being taken over by women.

"At Susan's graduation there were ten awards given out to the top students,'' Mr. Justice Moore said. "I watched as Susan and eight other women went up to receive their awards.

"And the last award was presented to a man.'' Mr. Justice Ward gave Mrs. Moore-Williams some professional advice by telling a story of an eagle that was raised by chickens.

When the eagle was old, it saw another eagle flying overhead and asked what it was. A chicken said it was an eagle, the most golden of all birds, the king of birds. The eagle, not knowing any better, went back to being a chicken because that is what it thought it was.

Mr. Justice Ward said: "Recognise the golden eagle in you and always endeavour to soar to your heights.'' Susan Moore-Williams