After studying law at Oxford University as a Manitoba Rhodes Scholar, Philip Slayton clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa. Then, for thirteen years, he pursued an academic career, teaching at McGill University and becoming dean of law at the University of Western Ontario. Philip then went into legal practice with a major Canadian law firm in Toronto, and worked on many of the biggest corporate and commercial transactions of the time. He retired from the practice of law in 2000.

Since leaving legal practice, Philip Slayton has written Lawyers Gone Bad: Money, Sex and Madness in Canada’s Legal Profession, published in hard cover by Viking Canada in 2007 and in paperback by Penguin Canada in 2008. He is a regular contributor on law-related topics to Canadian magazines and newspapers, including Maclean's, and has been a legal commentator on CBC television and radio. In 2008, for his legal ethics column in Canadian Lawyer magazine, he was awarded a Kenneth R. Wilson Memorial Award by Canadian Business Press for best regularly featured column.

Philip is now working on a book about the Supreme Court of Canada, to be published in 2011. Philip divides his time between Toronto and Nova Scotia. He is married to the writer Cynthia Wine. In 1998, Oxford University named him a “Distinguished Friend” of the university. Philip is a member of the Quadrangle Society of Massey College, University of Toronto, and the Writers’ Union of Canada.