Counsel
John-Paul is an accredited family law arbitrator, family law mediator and parenting coordinator, and a member of the bars of Alberta and British Columbia. John-Paul practiced family law in Vancouver for 14 years before taking a position as the executive director of the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family, a non-profit organization affiliated with the University of Calgary, in 2013. He took his training as a mediator in 2005, as a parenting coordinator in 2007, as an arbitrator in 2011 and as a collaborative practitioner in 2012. He returned to private practice as the principal of John-Paul Boyd Arbitration Chambers, serving all of Alberta and British Columbia, in 2018.
John-Paul’s work at the research institute included important studies on topics including the arbitration of family law disputes, children’s participation in justice processes, the relative cost and efficiency of dispute resolution processes, parenting apart and the effect of parental conflict on children, alienated and estranged children and parenting coordination.
John-Paul regularly writes and lectures on family law topics for courts, law societies, bar associations and the public. John-Paul is the founding author of the acclaimed public legal education wikibook JP Boyd on Family Law and its former companion blog, the first legal blog cited in a Canadian court judgment. He is a frequent speaker for the National Judicial Institute, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, the National Family Law Program, the Continuing Legal Education Society of BC, the Trial Lawyers Association of BC and the Legal Education Society of Alberta, and has taught the family law course for upper- year law students at the University of Calgary. His written work has been published by organizations including the UBC Law Review, Canadian Family Law Quarterly, the International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family, the Journal of International Aging, Law and Policy, Justice Canada, The Collaborative Review, The Advocate and the CBA’s National Magazine.
