HON. JUSTICE ROBERT J. SPENCE was appointed to the Ontario Court of Justice in March 2002. Prior to his appointment, Justice Spence was a litigator in private practice in Toronto, having been called to the Ontario Bar in 1979. He obtained his Master of Laws degree (LLM) at the University of New South Wales (Australia), where he attended in 1981-82.

He was certified by the Law Society of Upper Canada as a Specialist in Family Law in 1995. For many years he taught family law at the Bar Admission course in Ontario. He taught for two years in the Trial Advocacy course at the University of Toronto Law School.

For the first four years following his appointment to the Ontario Court, Justice Spence presided primarily over family law cases, as well as some criminal cases. Since March 2006 he has presided at the North Toronto Courthouse, where all six judges at that location specialize in family law and child protection cases. Justice Spence is currently the co-chair of Family Law education for the Ontario Court of Justice, in which capacity he organizes the family law education conferences held each year for the judges of that Court. He also sits on the Court's Board of Directors, as well as its Education Secretariat.