Mr Mills, who passed away on Saturday, graduated from Queens University Belfast in the 1940s and completed his apprenticeship at Macintosh & Bradley in Newtownards.

In the late 1940s, he took up a partnership at the practice of Thomas Elliot & Son in Strabane and remained there until his appointment as a resident magistrate in 1969. He mostly sat in North Down over the course of the next two decades until his retirement in 1990.

The Law Society has extended “sincere condolences to his family, friends and former colleagues” and will publish details of the funeral arrangements within the coming days.