Chair of Conveyancing, Glasgow
| Chair of Conveyancing University of Glasgow |
|
|---|---|
 Robert Rennie since 1993 |
|
| Formation | 1861 |
| Founder | Royal Faculty of Procurators in Glasgow |
| First holder | Anderson Kirkwook |
| Website | www.law.gla.ac.uk |
The Chair of Conveyancing is a Professorship at the University of Glasgow. It was founded in 1861 and endowed by the Faculty of Procurators in Glasgow. It is a part-time post, and holders have generally been solicitors in private practice. The current holder, Robert Rennie, is a partner in Harper Macleod Solicitors in Glasgow.
The Chair was founded by the Faculty of Procurators, the local society of law agents of which, prior to the establishment of the Law Society of Scotland, anyone wishing to practise in the courts of Glasgow had to be a member. The Faculty formerly held the right of appointment to the Chair, although this was recently removed.
The first occupant of the Chair, Anderson Kirkwood, went on to be a distinguished figure. Having founded the firm of Bannatynes & Kirkwood in 1839 in his late twenties, he was appointed to the Chair in 1862, holding it until 1867. He became Secretary of Court at the University in 1874 and was elected Dean of the Faculty of Procurators the following year. In 1878, whilst Secretary of Court, he and John Veitch, the Professor of Logic and Rhetoric, raised the funds to buy the library of Sir William Hamilton, to whom Veitch had previously been an assistant in the latter's post as Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. He remained Dean of Faculty for five years until 1880, and Secretary of Court until 1887.
Kirkwood was succeeded in the Chair by James Roberton, a partner in the firm of Roberton, Low, Roberton & Cross, now Mitchells Roberton, the oldest firm in Glasgow, and an authority on the common and statutory laws of land. He held the Chair from 1867 until his death in 1889. He too was Dean of the Faculty of Procurators, from 1885 to 1889, was awarded an LL.D. by the University in 1868, and was knighted in 1889, shortly before his death. A portrait of him by Thomas Annan is held by the National Portrait Gallery, London. The Sir James Roberton Memorial Prize, founded in 1955, is awarded annually for distinction in the class of History of Scots Law.
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