Biography

Noel Semple holds a SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, where he is affiliated with the Centre for the Legal Profession. His postdoctoral research queries the relationship between regulation of the legal profession(s) and access to justice.

Noel completed his Ph.D at Osgoode Hall Law School (York University) in 2011, after having received an LL.M degree in 2009.  His doctoral focus was the custody and access arrangements made for children following the breakdown of their parents’ relationships.  His dissertation critically analyzes the litigation and settlement mechanisms used to resolve these disputes, and their costs and benefits for the children involved.  The severe lack of affordable and professional legal assistance in the family law field became obvious during this research, and inspired Noel’s postdoctoral research agenda.

Noel’s work has appeared in the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, the Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, and the Family Court Review, among other journals. In the spring of 2012, he taught the Children and the Law course at the University of Western Ontario’s Faculty of Law.  During the autumn 2010 term, he was a visiting Research Fellow at Columbia Law School in New York.    Noel was called to the Ontario bar in 2008 after completing articles at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, in Toronto.  In 2007, he received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Noel lives with his wife, Angélique Moss, and his five year old daughter, Madeleine, in the west end of Toronto.

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)