Professor Dennis Parish is the Assistant Director and Managing Attorney for the Wood County Child Support Enforcement Agency. In that capacity he serves as the Agency’s Hearing Officer. He received his Bachelor of Education and Juris Doctorate degrees from the University of Toledo and began his legal career in 1982 as an Assistant Lucas County Prosecutor. Professor Parish was appointed to the bench as a Referee in the Lucas County Juvenile Court in 1984. In 1986, he was appointed Referee [later Magistrate] in the Wood County Juvenile/Probate Court. He returned to the Lucas County Juvenile Court in 1997 and was named the Senior Magistrate in 1999. In 2005, Professor Parish was appointed Judge on the Sixth District Court of Appeals, where he authored over 180 published decisions. He served two years and remains the only Magistrate in Ohio history to be appointed directly to the Court of Appeals.

Professor Parish has served on the Governor’s Juvenile Justice Task Force and was selected by the Ohio Supreme Court as Ohio’s representative to the national Uniform Interstate Family Support Act [UIFSA] Conference in Washington D.C. He was the lone magistrate selected to serve on the Ohio Courts Futures Commission, and has served on the Ohio Judicial College’s Board of Trustees.

Today, Professor Parish is an Instructor in Law for The University of Toledo, College of Law. He teaches Juvenile Law and the Prosecutor Clinic. He’s also an Assistant Professor at Bowling Green State University where he teaches the Legal Aspects of Sport & Recreation. In the past Professor Parish has taught an undergraduate course at UT titled Flawed Facts: American History in Film. He is a nationally recognized lecturer on judicial ethics, having made over 50 presentations in 20 states, Canada and Costa Rica. Previously, Professor Parish authored a twice monthly film column for the Bowling Green Sentinel-Tribune, and has been a contributing editor for The City Paper.

Professor Parish is a past president of the Ohio Association of Magistrates, the Wood County Historical Society, the Wood County Law Library, and Wood County Crime Stoppers. He is a member of the Ohio State, Lucas, Toledo and Wood County Bar Associations.