Madison Howell: Member Spotlight
Madison Howell
Lawyer
Madison Howell is a Toronto Family Lawyer dedicated to the dignified resolution of family disputes. She understands the value in merging strong advocacy with a reasoned, solution-oriented, collaborative practice to assist her clients and their families in building a cohesive, self-determined future. Prior to joining Resolve Dispute Resolution, Madison was a litigation associate at a national Bay Street firm, representing clients in professional liability and corporate commercial disputes. She developed a keen sense in distilling clients’ interests, analyzing the financial consequences, and devising a responsive litigation strategy.
Throughout her time in litigation, Madison learned the ways in which the public and adversarial system often worked contrary to her clients’ interests. In many instances, this brought her to assisting clients in resolving their disputes out of court, through negotiation, mediation, and arbitration. She learned there was a capacity for mutually beneficial, better controlled, and client-centred results outside of the traditional system. In her collaborative-oriented practice, she seeks to help her clients and their families resolve conflicts in a dignified, empowering, and efficient manner.
Madison is an attentive, empathic listener, who works closely with her clients to craft both personalized and creative solutions that will work to best situate their families for the future.
Quick Q&A with Madison Howell:
You made a transition from corporate litigation to family law, why the change?
While I enjoyed the challenge and large scope of corporate and professional liability litigation, my greatest interests and strengths lay at the interpersonal. Notably, working with professionals who had their licenses and professional identity on the line, allowed me the opportunity to help clients navigate conflict while keeping their integrity intact. My transition to settlement-oriented family law was motivated by my desire to help clients and families in a difficult time make smart decisions with integrity in restructuring and reimagining their family.
People may assume that corporate litigation and family law are extremely different, but would you say there are any similarities?
There are many ways these two seemingly different practices overlap. Namely, in empathic advocacy. People mired in conflict, whether it be a contract dispute between business partners or a couple in separation, want to be heard, informed, and recognized. While my corporate experience helps me understand and best analyze the financial issues inherent to a separation, I bring deep empathy and respect for the emotional side to a separation. As a lawyer, I’ve always listened deeply to my clients and focused on creative options and strategy to help my clients take their next steps mindfully.
In a recent case, can you give me an example of how the collaborative process helped a family in a way that litigation wouldn’t have been able to?
Litigation can constrain families in separation – whether it be in high legal bills, rigid models, or polarizing narratives. However, most devastatingly, is how litigation can irreparably harm relationships that continue well past the court date. In a recent case, I was able to help my client navigate, with the assistance of a family professional, a particularly tough co-parenting dynamic that ensured the children were not in the middle of the conflict and my client felt seen and respected. Having the assistance of a neutral family professional as part of the collaborative process, as well as having had the opportunity to better understand my client’s co-parent, helped me better advise my client on managing this difficult time. Strategically handling this tough parenting issue helped alleviate strain between the clients and paved a smoother road to discussing the financial issues.
