News: visit Cafe Wander in Glasgow during July and August to see an exhibition of Chris' photography.

Portrait by Joe Murphy: see
www.joe-murphy-portraits.com

Welcome to the website of Christopher M.J. Boyd LL.B (Hons), Dip.L.P, LL.M, N.P, AffWS.  By day, Chris is a solicitor and notary public qualified in Scotland (specialising in Discrimination and Employment Law) for the Ethnic Minorities Law Centre , where he heads up their Aberdeen(shire) outreach project.  By night, Chris is an academic, author, composer, journalist, martial-artist, musician (clarinettist, guitarist, pianist and saxophonist - soloist and in ensemble), photographer, poet, public speaker, visual artist and winter-sportsman (skier/snowboarder).  To find out more about Chris' past and current work (including where you can find it), to or to contact him about any upcoming projects or commissions, please click on the relevant tab above.

"My lasting memory of you shall always be as you were, playing ping pong, with a mojito in the other hand, in a jam jar... we stood and watched for a while and said 'what a chap'."
Hayley Gibson

Holding court in a hat

Chris is a member of a number of local, national and international professional, charitable and humanitarian associations, including: Amnesty International, Glasgow Young Professionals, the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, the Lawyers' Secular Society, the Scottish Public Law Group, the Scottish Young Lawyers’ Association, the Society of Writers to Her Majesty's Signet and Unite (the Union).

"It was widely accepted that, come the revolution, Chris would vote against his old bourgeois friends being shot and be shot himself not long afterwards. 'I'm known as a Bollinger Bolshie,' he once explained, when offering to buy the champagne."

David Harris (paraphrasing Michael White on Paul Foot)

After leaving school, Chris went to Glasgow University to study Law.  While there, he became involved in student politics (being elected Student Representative Council (SRC) Convenor in 2007-2008 for the Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association), mooting (as a participant and as a Mooting Society committee member in 2006-2007), debating (as a member of the Glasgow University Dialectic Society's Independent Socialist Club and as Dialectic Society Publicity Secretary in 2007-2008) and the creative-writing scene (getting some pieces published and, once, performing with Liz Lochhead, then the Glasgow University's Poet Laureate).

Tchai Ovna, my favourite tea-house

After graduating, and winning the David Theodore Lowe Prize in jurisprudence, he went to the Glasgow Graduate School of Law (when it was still run jointly by Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities) to obtain his Diploma in Legal Practice.

On completing that he joined Dundas & Wilson (D&W) to work as a trainee solicitor while simultaneously re-matriculating at Glasgow University to study (part-time) for his masters degree by research.  While at D&W Chris spent 1 year in the firm and 1 year on secondment (6 months to the Office of the Advocate General and thereafter, 6 months to Clydesdale Bank).  Eventually, realising that all the stories you hear about massive corporate/commercial law firms are true - though, in the interests of avoiding defamation suits, unprintable - he made a timely exit from that wing of the profession and moved to the Govan Law Centre for a few months before securing his current position.

"[When meeting you for the first time,] 'the wild looking scot who is surprisingly soft spoken' was my first thought I believe."
Rob Knox

Finally, when not in a suit, Chris is an unreconstructed dandy, all cravats and velvet jackets; a Human, European and Scottish (in that order) inhabitant of Glasgow's bohemian West-End.