About
When the government brings its full power to bear against an individual, Jacqueline Goodman is the lawyer who pushes back - and wins.
The most serious criminal charges require the most serious lawyers - and more often than most, Jacqueline Goodman gets that call. She is the lawyer other Orange County lawyers refer clients to most, according to Best Lawyers and Law Firms, 2026. Past-president of the California Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, Goodman is a State Bar Certified Specialist in Criminal Law with 30 years of extraordinary successes. She has won full acquittals in some of the most complex and notorious criminal cases, turned death penalty prosecutions into manslaughter verdicts, and changed California law itself through her courtroom victories. Her landmark pro bono representation of Chelsea Becker, a woman charged with murder for the loss of her full-term fetus, resulted not only in dismissal of all charges, but the removal of the sitting District Attorney and the end of such prosecutions across California - a landmark victory for women's reproductive rights. The companion case freed another woman who had already served five years of an eleven-year sentence. These weren't just wins - they were turning points in California legal history, covered by The New York Times and recognized nationwide among the legal and academic elite.
Her celebrated cases span the full range of high-stakes criminal defense: solo trial counsel in the DUI murder case involving MLB Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart; lead counsel in the internationally renowned "Irvine 11" free speech case; and the successful defense of journalists arrested in the OCCUPY LA raids, to name a few. Her 2024 acquittal in a first-degree murder case charged as LWOP, her 2025 dismissal of all charges against a client facing a life sentence for child molestation, and the 2026 release of a man serving a life sentence for a decades-old murder conviction are among her most recent courtroom victories.
Goodman is well-known for her defense of those accused of sex crimes - a reputation built over decades and recognized by her peers at the national level. She has won several acquittals in multiple-accuser cases and in cases involving confessions and damning covert recordings. Since 2014, she has co-chaired the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' premier sex crimes defense seminar - the gold standard in sex crimes defense training in the nation - drawing hundreds of attorneys annually from every state and federal jurisdiction, including private lawyers, public defenders, and military counsel.
Admitted before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit, the Central District of California, and the California and Massachusetts Bars, Goodman brings both courtroom firepower and national reach to every client she represents. She is featured on the Wall of Recognition at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, and serves as Founding Chair of NACDL's Decarceration Committee, having worked alongside scholars from Yale, Harvard, NYU, and Stanford to reshape criminal justice policy at the national level.
A regular television legal analyst and contributor to Court TV, the Los Angeles Daily Journal, and The Champion, Goodman has been quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian. She was specially invited to contribute - alongside the California Supreme Court Chief Justice - to the Daily Journal's 2025 commemorative edition.
Hard to beat that resume. But the real proof is in the results, and Goodman delivers - time and again.
