Neil Simon S. Silva is a lecturer on legal theory, commercial law, and political law at the UP College of Law. He received his Bachelor of Laws at the University of the Philippines in 2004, after receiving secondary education at the Philippine Science High School and completing undergraduate studies at the University of the Philippines, He was admitted to the Philippine Bar in 2005, after ranking 8th in the 2004 Philippine Bar examinations.

After working in private law practice, he worked as a consultant and then a staff lawyer at the Department of Justice until 2015. There he worked on defense cooperation issues (serving as legal adviser to the Philippine Negotiating Panel on the 2014 Philippine-US Agreement on Enhanced Defense Cooperation and the working groups of the Philippine Commission on Visiting Forces); maritime and oceanic law (including the drafting of the 2009 archipelagic baselines law, early versions of the maritime zones and archipelagic sealanes bills, and the Benham Rise Partial Extended Continental Shelf Submission); transnational crime policies (including the negotiation of the ASEAN Convention on Trafficking in Persons and the ASEAN Regional Plan of Action against Trafficking in Persons); and on peacebuilding with non-state armed groups (including the review of the Annexes to the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro and of the 2014 Bangsamoro Transition Commission draft of the Bangsamoro Law; and the implementation of agreements between the Government of the Philippines and CPP-NPA-NDF).

After briefly acting as Executive Director at the Energy Regulatory Commission, he began working as a contracted researcher at the University of the Philippines Law Center in 2017, before serving as a lecturer beginning in 2018. He also advises the National Coast Watch Council Secretariat and serves as a resource person on committee meetings of the Senate and the House of Representatives. He participates in various Track 1.5 and Track 2 activities on maritime concerns and international security, and provides lectures to officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Department of Foreign Affairs, and other policymaking and implementing agencies on the law of the sea and on maritime security issues.