Honorary University Fellows

Excerpt from the Vice-Chancellor's Address delivered at the Honorary University Fellowships Presentation Ceremony on December 2, 1999:

Professor Willoughby received his undergraduate and postgraduate education at the University of London where he took the Bachelor of Laws and Master of Laws degrees in 1958 and 1960 respectively. After passing the Law Society Solicitors' Final with honours the following year, he was appointed a Lecturer with Messrs Gibson and Weldon, which shortly afterwards merged with the School of Law to become the College of Law. This was followed by an invitation to teach at the Nigerian Law School in Lagos which he helped to start and which opened at the beginning of 1963.

In 1966 Professor Willoughby returned to Britain to take up an appointment as a Lecturer at the College of Law. After being promoted to Principal Lecturer in 1972 he left to join the University of Hong Kong in 1973 as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Law and in the following year was appointed Director of Professional Legal Education in that Department. In 1975 he was appointed the Second Chair of Law.

The University is particularly indebted to Professor Willoughby for his efforts in developing the programme for the Postgraduate Certificate in Laws, a professional qualification for the practice of law. The Department of Professional Legal Education was established in 1984 and he became the first head and professor of the department. In working out the programme for the PCLL he sought to link together the two stages into which the study of law can be divided – the academic and the professional; his aim was to produce a continuum without the sharp division that sometimes exists between these two stages of legal education.

Professor Willoughby has lectured publicly, published a number of books and also written extensively for leading law journals on many aspects of law, particularly in the fields of Company Law, Conveyancing and Revenue Law. He resigned from the Chair of Professional Legal Education in 1986 and is as successful in the private sector now as he was in academia. He is still leading his expertise to our University as Honorary Lecturer in the Department that he played such an important part in establishing. The University is proud to include Peter Willoughby among its Honorary Fellows.