Hanson Legal Counsel is a collaboration-driven, outcome-focused law firm that helps individuals and businesses find creative solutions to legal challenges. With authenticity, efficiency, and proficiency, our unwavering advocacy delivers an unquestionable advantage to those seeking dispute negotiation, commercial contracts, lease representation, or business counsel.
What Makes us Different
We’re people first and attorneys second. With clarity and honesty, we work collaboratively with all sides to find solutions that are in your best interest. By being transparent and down to earth, we create an experience that’s both accessible and comfortable.
Finding your best outcome. That’s what we do better. By making the legal system work for you, rather than you working for the legal system, our fresh approach uncovers solutions that are both efficient and effective.
We combine legal acumen with creative thinking. By staying ahead of evolving legislation, resolving complicated disputes through listening and innovative problem solving, and crafting practical solutions to complex problems, we’ve been recognized by peers for outstanding advocacy and counsel.
Justin Hanson has spent his career helping businesses, organizations, public officials, and individuals navigate difficult and sensitive challenges. His legal practice has included hundreds of complex disputes, high-stakes negotiations, and situations in which the law is only part of the problem—and often an even smaller part of the solution.
That experience shaped his belief that better outcomes often come from understanding conflict itself: what drives it, what keeps people stuck, and how the right process can create options that adversarial approaches often foreclose. Justin is a gifted listener and communicator who remains calm in the midst of chaos. His approach helps parties in dispute clarify their thinking, gain perspective, and recognize opportunities for resolution that may otherwise be difficult to see. In doing so, parties can often avoid the cost, disruption, and emotional toll of litigation—and the deepening conflict that can accompany it.
Across more than two decades of professional experience, Justin’s career has included notable roles as a Policy Analyst for Congressional Leadership Offices in the U.S. House of Representatives and as an Assistant State’s Attorney in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, where he served in the Civil Actions Bureau’s Complex Litigation Unit.
In private practice, Justin has served as business counsel and complex litigation counsel to both the defendant and plaintiff side in a wide range of commercial and civil matters. He has represented a diverse range of clients—from individuals and middle-market businesses to international companies—before courts and other judicial bodies in county, state, and federal jurisdictions across the country. He has also participated in international mediations in Mexico and Germany, successfully resolving complex disputes through mediation and collaborative negotiation.
Since 2019, Justin has been repeatedly recognized by Super Lawyers for excellence in Commercial Litigation and Construction Litigation and has also been recognized by U.S. News & World Report’s Best Lawyers, Ones to Watch in America.
Today, in addition to leading Hanson Legal Counsel, Justin is the founder of Peacefield, a conflict resolution firm that helps parties work through disputes with clarity, patience, and purpose. He is also actively involved in his community, serving on the Village of La Grange’s Community and Economic Development Commission and helping coach La Grange Little League and Lyons Township girls’ flag football.
Justin also enjoys teaching. He previously served as an adjunct professor of Advanced Legal Writing at Chicago-Kent College of Law. Through the Chicago Bar Association’s Lawyers in the Classroom program, he taught Chicago Public School students lessons in basic civil rights and government. He also considers it a career highlight to have been invited into local elementary schools to teach students how a bill becomes a law, developing an interactive classroom exercise designed to encourage young people to understand and participate in the democratic process.
Justin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law, one of the world’s leading centers for the study and practice of dispute resolution. He remains deeply involved with Straus, whose international community includes dispute-resolution scholars and practitioners from around the world.
Justin earned his J.D. from Chicago-Kent College of Law, where he received CALI Awards for coursework in Trial Advocacy, Intensive Strategic Complex Problem Solving, and Advanced Legal Writing. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Marquette University. He also holds professional certificates in Mergers and Acquisitions from Columbia Business School and in Advanced Negotiations, Mediations, and Advocacy from the Chicago Bar Association.
Justin is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of Illinois, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He is an active member of the California state mediator association, the Litigation Counsel of America, and the Chicago Bar Association’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee.
Above all, Justin is a proud husband and father of four beautiful children.
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