Top man will bring legal team to city

Professor Richard Taylor, who has completed nearly 40 years of service and is now an Emeritus Professor at the University of Central Lancashire, was elected vice-president for 2017-18 at the Society’s annual conference at Oxford University.

In 2018-19 he will become the president of the Society, which boasts approximately 3,000 members and is the oldest and largest learned society in the field of law.

In his role as president, Prof Taylor will take the lead in the many and varied activities of the Society in promoting and supporting legal education as well as bringing the prestigious 2019 Society of Legal Scholars Conference to Preston.

He said: “Obviously I am flattered and delighted to be elected to a post with such a distinguished list of predecessors going back for over a century with so many iconic names that were legends to me when I was a student and a young academic myself.

“I am also very pleased that my election means that the highly significant Society of Legal Scholars Conference of 2019, which will mark the 110th anniversary of the Society, will be coming to UCLan having been to universities such as Cambridge, Edinburgh, York, London, Dublin and Oxford in recent years. The four day conference always attracts an impressive number of senior judges and legal experts from both Government and the professions to speak at the plenary sessions as well as the many distinguished academics, both young and old, from all over the world, giving papers at the 28 subject sections.”

UCLan deputy vice-chancellor and former Dean of the University’s Lancashire Law School Lynne Livesey said: “It is a richly deserved accolade and an affirmation of the incredibly high esteem in which Richard is held by his academic and practising peers across the discipline.

“The Society of Legal Scholars is the most highly regarded of the various legal societies, both in the UK and internationally. It is an absolute honour for UCLan to be able to host their conference and, more importantly, for us to have among our professors someone whose personal achievements and influence in academia and the legal world have culminated in his election to the top position.”