Tributes have been paid to the leading Welsh family lawyer and long-serving Law Society council member Robin ap Cynan, who died suddenly last Friday. 

Robin ap Cynan was admitted in 1983 and became a Law Society council member in 1990. He served as an assessor and chief assessor to the Society’s Family Mediation Panel. 

Society president Jonathan Smithers said: ‘Robin has made enormously valuable contributions to the Law Society. He served on council for 26 years, chairing the Wales Committee for four years and the Welsh Affairs Working Party before that. I know that he was an active member of the Associated Law Societies of Wales for many years. He was also more recently a member of the Law Society’s Legal Affairs and Policy Board and the Family Law Committee. 

‘He was respected and beloved by those who worked with him, and colleagues have been sharing their fond and heartfelt memories of him since hearing the news.

‘His warmth and expertise will be missed. Tributes have been pouring in over the last 24 hours for Robin and he will be very fondly remembered by his colleagues on council; his measured and thoughtful contributions to debates, his sense of humour and sharp wit, and above all his gentleness, politeness and friendship to those he served with.’

David Dixon CM, former chair of the Wales committee, said:

'Robin served on council for more than 25 years. For many years he was a member of several committees simultaneously and usually a member of a board, too.  His commitment to and service for the Law Society were extraordinary.  He was a distinguished chair of the Wales committee for four years  and he had chaired the Welsh Affairs Working Party which was the predecessor of the Wales committee.

'I grieve for the loss of a much respected friend and colleague. I will miss his wisdom, his measured and thoughtful contributions to debates on council and at the Wales committee and Constitutional Law Reference Group and, of course, his brocade dinner jacket.

'RIP Robin.  Solicitor, mediator, poet, aesthete, epicurean and Welshman, you served your country and your profession nobly and honourably.'