Tom Guthrie is a Professor of Private Law.  After 25 years at the School, he will be taking partial retirement this autumn. 

Professor Guthrie studied at the University of Glasgow in the early 1970s, matriculating in the same year as Professor Jim Murdoch.  Studying Politics, he had no desire to become a lawyer, and undertook a couple of years of postgraduate study after graduating with an honours degree.  With few academic jobs on the horizon, he decided to undertake an apprenticeship, which proved to be eye-opening.

Working for the court department, Tom’s job included regular trips to institutions such as Barlinnie, Longriggend and Carstairs, which due to their typically remote locations proved difficult to access as he couldn’t drive.

Following his apprenticeship, he decided to return to the education sector, and applied for a job at Paisley College.  His first job was teaching chartered surveyors.  He later moved on to teaching social work law to trainee social workers, at which time he wrote what would become the textbook ‘Social Work Law in Scotland’.

After a decade at Paisley, Tom applied for a job at Glasgow University in the Private Law department.  At this time, there was no central Law School, only individual departments such as Civil Law, Private Law, Public International Law, etc.  Although he wasn’t offered the role, Joe Thompson (then Head of the Private Law department), was so impressed by his interview that he promised him a job should one arise in the near future.  It did, and in 1992 Tom moved to the University of Glasgow.

His first assignment was teaching on the ‘Property, Trusts and Succession’ course; former students may (or may not) have fond memories of his 9am classes delivered every Monday, Wednesday and Friday!

After a couple of years of delivering lectures, Tom came to the conclusion that the needs of the students weren’t best served by this format of teaching.  This led to him developing a problem-based learning course, which put the onus on students to learn – as well as lead tutorials.  This provided students with the transferable skills they required for legal practice, enabling them to apply rules to reality.

Tom also took on the post of Deputy Exams Officer (deputy to Bill Gordon), prior to becoming Exams Officer, a role which he still holds.  Latterly, he was appointed as convenor of the University’s Academic Standards Committee. 

Professor Guthrie will take partial retirement this autumn. He is sure that students will not miss his frequent references to the fortunes of his football team, nor his jokes, but that they would benefit from further musical education about bands such as Dinosaur Jr, The Felice Brothers, and The Clash and Drive-By Truckers (to which students have been frequently been subjected in his lectures, thanks to YouTube). 

Plans for retirement include spending time in the Italian town of Ferrara, which happens to have a local football team on the cusp of promotion to Serie A  This will not, however, replace his abiding love of Partick Thistle.  

First published: 12 April 2017

<< April Newsletter