Warm hugs and fond recollections filled The Chapel of the University of the West Indies (UWI) last Sunday as the past and present intersected at an 80th-anniversary church service commemorating the storied history of Jamaican law firm, Myers, Fletcher & Gordon (MFG). 

With a dizzying array of members of the legal fraternity in attendance, including Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewellyn, as well as Scotia Group CEO and president Audrey Tugwell Henry and Jamaica National Group managing director Earl Jarrett seated among the congregation, the service gave the law practice just cause to look back on its laundry list of accomplishments, and ahead to the future. 

Addressing the gathering, MFG’s managing partner Christopher Kelman assessed the firm’s eight decades of operation as one of weathering storms and celebrating triumphs.

“Up to the level of the Privy Council, our lawyers have appeared in numerous landmark cases, and post-independence, we have been part of large transactional deals on behalf of local and international investor clients, and we acted in every large-scale housing stock of thousands of Jamaicans, including Mona, Harbour View and Greater Portmore and continue to do so,” he began.

Kelman said MFG over the course of its timeline to become the largest local and regional firm, had earned the trust and respect of clients and colleagues alike.

“As we celebrate 80, in a post-Covid world when the legal profession is undergoing profound transformation, driven by technological advancements and shifting client expectations, our foundational values of integrity, excellence has served us well,” he declared.

Kelman acknowledged the dedicated work input of his firm’s partners, associates and staff. “As we embark on the next chapter of our journey,” the managing partner remarked, “we reaffirm our commitment to upholding the highest standards of professionalism, ethics and excellence in law practice. We thank our clients for entrusting us with your legal work and give the assurance to continue the delivery of quality, timely and innovative legal services so you can achieve your objectives.” 

Meanwhile, former managing partner Derek Jones—in his tribute on behalf of the alumni of the firm—- reminisced on the raft of changes during his tenure and the lessons learnt from critical players within the practice. 

“As articled clerks, we learned more from the senior secretaries than the lawyers. Great names like Norma Helwig, Vivienne Penso and Sybil Donaldson taught us more than all the law books,” Jones reflected. “Not to mention Elaine Waite who was WSK Gordon’s secretary, she smoked and when we were broke, which was most of the time, you could always bum a Rothman’s from her. We also learned from Mavis McDonald who was Douglas Fletcher’s secretary and from Joyce Gordon who was the gatekeeper for Myers. But at the heart of the success was the vision and generosity of spirit of Myers, Fletcher and Gordon.” 

Crediting the transformational leadership of Pat Rousseau, Jones, who became a partner at the law firm in 1976,  remembered Rousseau “took us kicking and screaming from being a stodgy antiquated law firm, typical of the day, into the modern world of service driven practitioners, with a new home at 21 East Street.”

According to Jones, Rousseau’s successor Ivor Alexander left his own distinctive imprint with inspired leadership of his own.  Of Alexander’s time at the helm, Jones said: “[he] moulded us into a first-class, modern, driven organization keeping in time, regular financial statements, centralised word processing on an IBM 400 platform which was unheard of, committee structures, and professional accountability among the partners.

In her Sunday sermon to attentive congregants, Reverend Karen Kirlew, acting Baptist warden-tutor of the United Theological College of the West Indies, drew a throughline to the present Lenten season and the need to build ‘one community’, which was the theme of her rousing speech. 

“This community acknowledges the reality of the presence of God in the midst of our own lived realities while ensuring that our work bears true witness of the ways we offer ourselves to the wider communities and the people we serve,” Reverend Kirlew posited. 

“To the extent that when others come in contact with us there is something to be known about who we are, something to be known about the principles upon which we stand, something to be known about the virtues with which we clothe ourselves, and something to be known about the integrity with which we attend to these virtues, that integrity which no force on this earth can undermine,” she added.

Founded on April 1, 1944, by Alfred Myers and his son Frank, Douglas Fletcher and W.S.K Gordon, their namesake law firm has amassed an impressive checklist of firsts for a Jamaican practice, including the first female partner Dorothy McLarty, the first female managing partner Barbara Alexander, and the first female head of a litigation department Sandra Minott Phillips.  MFG opened an office in London in 1995 and is still the only firm in the English-speaking Caribbean to achieve the distinction.