Chris is the founding partner of Smith Duggan Cornell & Gollub LLP in Boston, Massachusetts, which opened in December of 1989. He is a trial and an appellate lawyer who has tried more than 100 civil jury trials to verdict in state and federal courts and has briefed or argued more than 40 appeals before several US Circuit Courts of Appeal, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and several intermediate appellate courts. Recently, he has participated with a team of distinguished constitutional scholars in writing several amicus briefs to the United States Supreme Court in some of the most closely followed cases before the Court, including Moore v. Harper, Trump v. Anderson, and Moore v. United States.

Chris has represented two Ivy League Universities and numerous Fortune 500 companies who have a keen interest in the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), including compliance, impact and application in both higher education and commercial settings.

Chris is a regular faculty member of the American Bar Association’s Trial Advocacy College held annually at the National Judicial College in Reno. He also teaches constitutional law and history for the National Constitution Center as part of its Scholar Exchange Program. He is the founder and director of the James Otis Lecture Series, a program dedicated to bringing noted scholars to high school students to discuss important topics of American constitutional and legal history.

Chris is a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society and is one of only 200 people elected to resident membership the Colonial Society of Boston. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Concord Museum and the Board of Advisors to Revolutionary Spaces in Boston. He is a past president and current Board Member of the Charitable Irish Society, the oldest Irish organization in the Americas dedicated to helping immigrants transition to a life in freedom in the United States.

Chris holds an A.B. from Boston College, summa cum laude (1981) and a JD from the University of Virginia (1984) where he and his partner won the William Minor Lile Moot Court Competition. He was elected to several academic honor societies including Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha Sigma Nu and Phi Alpha Theta. He has been elected to several legal honor societies including the International Society of Barristers, the American Board of Trial Advocates, and the International Association of Defense Counsel.