Étienne Cossette-Lefebvre

Étienne Cossette-Lefebvre is a lawyer, a doctoral candidate in law at the University of Toronto, and an adjunct assistant professor and fellow in property law at Queen's University Faculty of Law. He is a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar (2021-2024) and a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship Doctoral Fellow in honour of Nelson Mandela (2021-2024).

His dissertation offers innovative trans-systemic perspectives on the idea of self-ownership to explain a person's rights over their body, image, voice and personal information. He feels privileged to be a Jeune Boursier at Collège Massey. ​ Étienne obtained his B.C.L./LL.B. (Honours) from McGill University's Faculty of Law in May 2014. His time at the Faculty earned him several awards for excellence, and his name appears on the Dean's Honour Roll. He also received the Quebec Comparative Law Association's essay competition prize in the undergraduate category (2013-2014). During his post-secondary studies, Étienne continued his high-level training in classical piano. ​

After graduating from the Bar, where he earned the second-highest mark of his entire cohort (2014-2015), Étienne worked as a research lawyer at the Quebec Court of Appeal. In 2018-2019, he clerked for the Honourable Russell Brown at the Supreme Court of Canada. In 2020, he obtained a Master of Law degree from the University of Toronto. During the 2020-2021 academic year, he lecturer at McGill University's Faculty of Law and was an Associate Director of the Paul-André Crépeau Centre for Private and Comparative Law. His research interests include the law of persons, the law of property, the law of obligations, the law of succession, comparative law, legal theory and philosophy, and legal history.