In the legal realm, the Goudarzi name is associated with record-breaking wins.
In a 2021 lawsuit, Longview attorney Brent Goudarzi represented the children of an East Texas woman who was killed by a semi-truck. A Titus County jury awarded the children $730 million — the largest wrongful death verdict in history at the time.
Goudarzi’s 25-year-old son, who soon will join his father at the Goudarzi & Young law firm, which has offices in Longview and Gilmer, already is setting records of his own.
Dain Goudarzi is a third-year student at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law, and though he won’t graduate until May, he’s been practicing as an attorney under a provisional law license (also called a student Bar card or supervised Bar card) under the supervision of an experienced attorney: his uncle, Marty Young. (Though Brent Goudarzi and Young are cousins, Dain Goudarzi refers to Young as his uncle.)
On March 18, Dain Goudarzi represented a client in a Gregg County courtroom who was injured in a car wreck in December 2020. The jury rendered a $170,000 verdict in favor of his client — which could be the largest verdict a Texas jury has rendered to someone represented by a student attorney.
"In 40 years of practicing law, I've never heard of a law student with a [provisional] Bar card receiving this value of verdict on their own case,” said Athens attorney Jeff Weinstein, a member of the State Bar of Texas’ board of directors, which oversees licensure for attorneys. “I think it's the largest verdict in the history of Texas jurisprudence for someone with a student Bar card.”
Born and raised in the Longview area, Dain Goudarzi said he knew from a young age that he wanted to be an attorney like his father. After graduating from Gilmer High School, he attended the University of Alabama and graduated with a degree in marketing and criminal justice before heading to law school in the Lone Star State.
On March 18, Dain Goudarzi tried his third case using his provisional Bar card. His uncle was in the courtroom with him as his supervising attorney, but he handled the case by himself.
"When I walked in that courtroom last week with my client, this was his one shot at justice," Dain Goudarzi said. "That was the only time he was going to be able to stand in front of a judge and jury and give his testimony — the only time I was going to be able to get someone else to take responsibility for this accident. So, it's important, every case we have, that we treat it as that important, because it is to our clients.”
The jury awarded his client almost $170,000 for past medical expenses, physical impairment, pain and suffering and mental anguish, the verdict shows. Eleven of the 12 jurors signed onto the verdict. Under Texas law, juries in civil cases don’t have to reach unanimous verdicts, but at least five-sixths of the jury must agree.
Dain Goudarzi is among perhaps a handful of law school students in the nation who have tried cases resulting in sizable verdicts for their clients. In June 2013, a second-year Harvard School of Law student’s client was awarded a $250,000 verdict in a divorce case, but few other cases won by student attorneys appear to have resulted in significant verdicts.
Weinstein and Brent Goudarzi said the March 18 verdict would be an accomplishment for more experienced attorneys — and even more so for a law school student.
"I do this every day, and we don't usually score those kind of numbers without something pretty exaggerated, like somebody was driving impaired, like alcohol or drugs,” Weinstein said.
Brent Goudarzi said his son has always been a leader and “always took up the cause for the underdog.”
"He wants to do the best for his clients,” he said.
Dain Goudarzi is one of four Goudarzi and Young family members who will join their fathers in the legal professional. His sister is in law school, and so is one of Young’s sons. Another one of Young’s sons will start law school in September, Brent Goudarzi said.
“I could not be any more excited to work with my children and Marty's children,” Brent Goudarzi said.
Dain Goudarzi will take the Bar exam in late July, and he’ll join his father and his uncle at their law firm the following Monday at 7:45 a.m. sharp.
"It's my honor to follow in both my father and my uncle's footsteps and come back home and provide a voice for those who would otherwise be voiceless. It's that important," he said. "That's why we have a legal system. That's what separates the United States of America from every other country. Our cases aren't decided by tribunals. They're not decided by politicians. They are decided by regular people who are selected at random to come to the courthouse and decide the dispute.”
