Robert Boyd


21 December 1946 - 17 October 2007



Robert Boyd, who died on 17 October, was a truly unique solicitor. He almost single-handedly codified, and in many instances created as a discrete study, education law in its application to independent schools.



Supported by a team which at the time of his death numbered some 50 lawyers, he became one of the leading advisers to the UK's independent schools sector.



Initially, Mr Boyd developed the form of contract that parents are asked to sign when entering their child for an independent school. Even today, the contract that parents are asked to sign will either be one of Mr Boyd's own design, or will have been developed from the model he devised.



At first, his purpose was to anticipate and rebut many of the excuses which parents might put forward to avoid paying school fees.



Subsequently, these contract documents expanded to cover the full extent of the parent/school relationship.



From these beginnings, Mr Boyd developed through many seminars, articles and books a comprehensive body of law and practice relating to education in general and independent schools in particular.



As a lawyer, his ambit encompassed many disciplines. He became a guru in the complexities of permanent endowment to be found within the deep recesses of charity law.



He guided many independent schools on the procedures involved in exchanging 'trust' status (rendering governors personally liable for debts in the event of a school's failure) for incorporated status having limited liability.



He was particularly regarded as a very safe pair of hands when crisis management was required, and was adept in giving advice on the handling of media interest in schools. Recently, he was an influential guiding hand for many schools during the Office of Fair Trading inquiry into the alleged exchange of information between schools on the subject of fees.



Mr Boyd was born in 1946 and educated at Stonyhurst College and Birmingham University. He qualified as a solicitor and initially practised on his own, before joining Veale Wasbrough in Bristol in 1988.



His early experience was varied. He practised as an effective advocate in the lower courts, and in a number of criminal trials. Most significantly, perhaps, he represented one of the four defendants in the Jeremy Thorpe conspiracy-to-murder trial in 1979. All defendants were acquitted.



For nearly 20 years, Mr Boyd focused his energies on providing legal advice to independent schools. His first book, Independent Schools - Law, Custom & Practice was published in 1998 to favourable reviews. It was used as a reference by the House of Lords in the celebrated case of Phelps v London Borough of Hillingdon in July 2000. At the request of the Independent Schools Bursars Association, he co-authored the Bursars Guide and was also commissioned by the Boarding Schools Association to write a definitive guide for housemasters and housemistresses.



While essentially a practical lawyer, Mr Boyd's approach to legal discipline was rigorously intellectual and he relished an argument. Among his papers was an exchange of correspondence with Lord Denning, no less, on the subject of the law relating to liquidated damages in its application to the contractual requirement of independent schools to demand a term's fee in lieu of notice.



Outside his legal vocation, which at times was all-consuming, Mr Boyd was an extraordinarily gifted pianist. He was able, without sheet music, to play and improvise for hours at a time. He was a regular performer at the Bristol Savages in the years before the onset of what became his terminal illness in the early months of 2007.



The team of lawyers and staff at Veale Wasbrough, who supported him, were devoted to him, and to the leadership which he gave.



Most of all for Robert, however, his 'team' was his wife, Marilyn, and his two sons and a daughter, to whom he was devoted.