The 2021 Pat Donovan Dinner is being arranged to farewell a group of UQ Law Alumni who are leaving shortly for postgraduate studies overseas.

The dinner is named in honour of Francis Patrick (Pat) Donovan (1922-2012), the first UQ law graduate to take this path.  Donovan was born on 2 February 1922 in Ingham.  He was educated at St Joseph's College, Nudgee, where he was Dux.  In 1938, he was awarded an open scholarship to the University of Queensland.  During the war years (1939-1945), he completed his legal studies whilst serving in the Australian Army.  In 1946, he graduated with a Bachelor of Laws and was admitted as a barrister.   In 1946, he became the Law School's first Rhodes Scholar.  At Magdalen College, Oxford, he completed a Bachelor of Civil Law degree (1949).  In 1952, he was appointed Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Melbourne.  In 1961, he commenced a career in the Australian diplomatic service, later becoming Australia's Ambassador to the OECD (1977).  After retirement from the diplomatic service, he served on the International Court of Arbitration.  In 1976, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia.  In 1998, the French government appointed him a Chevalier Legion d'honneur.  After many years living in an apartment in the Avenue Foch, Paris, he died at the age of 90 in 2012.

This year, the UQ law alumni who are leaving for overseas study are:

• Jack Baldwin (Master of Law and Finance at Oxford)

• Penelope Bristow (BCL at Magdalen College, Oxford)

• Sarah Clouston (LLM at Columbia)

• Zack George (Master of Law and Finance at Linacre College, Oxford)

• Leo Rees-Murphy (Master of Law and Finance at St Hugh’s College, Oxford)

• James Rigby (BCL at St Edmund Hall, Oxford)

• Benjamin Teng (LLM at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge)

• Tom Whip (LLM at Columbia)

• Hannah Williams (LLM at Cambridge)

The dinner in their honour is to be held as a private function at Greenglass Restaurant, 336 George Street, Brisbane, on Tuesday, 13 July 2021, at 7pm.

Tickets for this dinner are available for UQLA Members and their guests.  The cost is $70 per person.