Emma Rhodes

Emma Rhodes is our exclusively recommended Children’s Law expert in Canada on the Advisory Excellence website. If you need assistance in this area, please contact Emma directly using the contact details listed above.

Emma has been involved in many activities to promote education and awareness of youth legal issues, including sitting on numerous panels for Legal Aid Ontario, the Ontario Court of Justice, the Law Society of Upper Canada, the Family Lawyers Association, the Ministry of the Attorney General and the Ontario Bar Association. In 2014, Emma testified before the Senate of Canada’s Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights about the overrepresentation of visible minority youth in the criminal justice system. She is a panel lawyer for the Office of the Children’s Lawyer for child protection, custody and access, minor parents, Voluntary Youth Service Agreements (VYSA), and secure treatment hearings.

Emma is on the Executive of the Ontario Bar Association’s Child and Youth Law Section, and sits on Legal Aid Ontario’s Criminal Law Advisory Committee and Criminal Law Youth Panel Standards Advisory Committee. Emma was an Instructor at Osgoode Hall Law School where she taught Trial Advocacy from 2010 to 2016, and was an adjunct professor at University of Toronto from 2012 to 2014 for a course on Youth Criminal Justice. She is the Criminal Lawyers’ Association’s representative for youth criminal justice issues for all of Ontario.

Emma Rhodes was selected to be part of the Ministry of Attorney General’s Independent Legal Advice panel for Sexual Assault Survivors Pilot Program. Emma is co-author of Prosecuting and Defending Youth Criminal Justice Cases (Edmond Publishing) and a contributing editor for Wilson on Children and the Law (LexisNexis), and for Halsbury’s Laws of Canada (LexisNexis). She was the recipient of the Toronto Lawyers Association’s Honsberger Award in 2019 for representing each of the three pillars of the TLA – knowledge, community and advocacy.