Building Bridges: Meet Moyosore Somide, Director of Community Legal Services
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In February 2026, Western University’s Faculty of Law published a feature on my appointment as Director of Community Legal Services, titled Building Bridges: Meet Moyosore Somide, Director of Community Legal Services.
My journey to this role was not a straight line. I started my legal career in Nigeria and came to Canada as an internationally trained lawyer and had to figure out a system that wasn’t built with me in mind. No roadmap, no guarantee, just the determination to keep going until I found my footing. I went through the NCA process, articled at the City of London, built a litigation practice at Intact Insurance managing 80 complex files, and somewhere in all of that, I never lost sight of the reason I became a lawyer in the first place, to be in someone’s corner when the system feels too big and too cold to navigate alone.
That’s what Community Legal Services is. It’s where people who fall through the gaps in our legal system, people who can’t afford a lawyer but need one, come for help. And it’s where law students learn that being a lawyer is not just about knowing the law. It’s about seeing the person in front of you.
The interview also gave me space to talk about mentorship, something I feel deeply about. Because when I was navigating the hardest seasons of building my career here, people showed up for me. They believed in me before I had the track record to prove it. I carry that. And now I get to pay it forward, to students, to foreign-trained lawyers finding their footing.
My vision for CLS is simple at its core: excellent legal service for the community, transformative learning for students, and a willingness to think creatively about how we expand access to justice. Whether that’s through new partnerships, technology, or pilot programs that meet emerging needs, I want CLS to be a clinic that doesn’t just serve the community today but develops the leaders who will serve it for decades to come.