Lamber Goodnow Phoenix pairs the institutional weight of Fennemore — Arizona’s oldest law firm, founded in 1885 — with a technology-driven, client-first approach to catastrophic-injury cases across the Valley and the Southwest.
AN AWESOME ATTORNEYS EDITORIAL PROFILE Independently researched from public records, court filings, national press, peer-review directories, and verified client reviews.
ATTORNEY ADVERTISING / IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER. This profile is informational and may constitute attorney advertising. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney–client relationship. Case results, recovery figures, success rates, ratings, and awards described below are reported by the firm or by third-party rating organizations and are attributed accordingly; they describe past matters and do not guarantee, warrant, or predict the outcome of any future case. Every case is unique and involves risk, including the risk of loss. Prospective clients should consult directly with a licensed attorney about their specific circumstances.
AT A GLANCE
| FIRM Lamber Goodnow Injury Lawyers | STRUCTURE A division/practice group of Fennemore (Fennemore Craig, P.C.) |
|---|---|
| FOUNDER & CHAIR Marc H. Lamber (practice founded 1991) | MANAGING PARTNER, FENNEMORE James Goodnow (Harvard Law; firm CEO) |
| PARENT FIRM FOUNDED 1885 — the oldest law firm in Arizona | PRACTICE FOCUS Plaintiff-side personal injury & wrongful death |
| PHOENIX OFFICE 2394 E Camelback Rd, Ste 600, Phoenix, AZ 85016 | OTHER OFFICES Tucson, AZ; Denver, CO (+ Fennemore network) |
| PEER RATING Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent (highest) | CLIENT RATING Perfect 10/10 Avvo rating |
| REPORTED RECOVERIES $100,000,000+ for clients (firm-reported) | FEE STRUCTURE Contingency — no fee unless they recover |
| PHONE 602-ARIZONA (602-274-9662) | WEBSITE lambergoodnow.com |
Of the dozens of personal-injury firms competing for attention in metropolitan Phoenix, very few can claim a genuinely distinctive origin story. Lamber Goodnow Phoenix can. It is not a standalone advertising shop; it is the plaintiff-side injury practice of Fennemore — known historically as Fennemore Craig, P.C. — the oldest law firm in Arizona, in continuous operation since 1885, decades before Arizona achieved statehood. The firm built its first century defending the railroads, banks, and major businesses of the territory and state. Lamber Goodnow took that same institutional rigor and pointed it in the opposite direction: at the side of the injured individual.
This profile examines how that happened, who leads the practice, what the firm actually does, how it presents its results, and what its clients say about being represented during the hardest moments of their lives. Where the firm or a rating organization makes a claim, this profile attributes it as such — a standard that is both good journalism and, under Arizona’s attorney-advertising rules, good practice.
Origin: The Defense Lawyer Who Crossed the Aisle
Marc H. Lamber is, by his own account and by the firm’s, “home-grown.” He grew up in Phoenix and graduated from the city’s Shadow Mountain High School in 1984, earned a B.A. cum laude from the University of Arizona in 1988, and took his J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1991. He then returned home to begin his career — not as a plaintiff’s lawyer, but as a defense attorney at Fennemore Craig, representing the kinds of corporate and insurance interests that injured plaintiffs typically face across the table.
That background is the key to understanding the practice he later built. Having defended insurers and corporate defendants, Lamber understood precisely how the other side evaluates, contests, and devalues injury claims. The firm argues that this gives him “unique and enhanced credibility” with defense lawyers, insurance companies, corporate defendants, and judges — because they know his preparation is built on having sat in their chairs. In the early 1990s, by the firm’s telling, much of Phoenix’s injury work was handled by high-volume advertising shops. Lamber’s thesis was that an injured person deserved the same caliber of preparation that Fennemore had been delivering to the railroads and banks for a hundred years.
“I thought injured people deserved the same caliber of preparation that the railroads and the banks had been getting from this firm for a century.” — Marc Lamber, as the firm describes its founding philosophy
The Partnership: A Marquee Name and a Harvard-Trained Innovator
The firm’s name reflects a genuine partnership. The “Goodnow” is James Goodnow — and his profile is unusual enough to be worth telling in full, because it is a meaningful part of the firm’s identity and its technology-forward reputation.
Goodnow began at Fennemore Craig in 2000 as a file clerk while still in college. He graduated from Santa Clara University and then Harvard Law School, became a lawyer in 2006, and made partner in 2011. In 2018 he was named managing partner of Fennemore — the president of the firm and chair of its management committee, a role equivalent to chief executive — becoming, by multiple accounts, one of the youngest lawyers to run a large American law firm and the youngest managing partner at the firm since its 1885 founding. Marc Lamber brought Goodnow into the injury practice as an equal partner, giving the group both a marquee operator and a firm-wide leadership platform.
Goodnow is also widely credited as a legal-technology pioneer. The Wall Street Journal chronicled his team’s use of Google Glass to record accident victims’ daily struggles for use in their cases; he and Lamber have publicly explored virtual reality and 3D accident reconstruction in litigation. On a personal note that speaks to the firm’s ethos, Goodnow founded a kidney-disease awareness nonprofit after recovering from a rare kidney illness himself. Both Lamber and Goodnow hold the highest Martindale-Hubbell peer rating, AV Preeminent, and perfect 10/10 Avvo client ratings.
The Core Differentiator: National Horsepower, Local Firepower
The single most important fact about Lamber Goodnow is structural, and it is the engine of the firm’s entire value proposition. Lamber Goodnow is not a separate legal entity — it is, in the firm’s own words, a division of Fennemore Craig, P.C., a national business-law firm with offices throughout the Southwest. For an injured client, that integration has a concrete consequence: the insurers and corporate defendants on the other side already know Fennemore’s name and century-plus reputation, and they take it seriously.
The firm distills this into a memorable formulation: “national horsepower and local firepower.” The national side is the institutional muscle and resources of a major firm, which the practice says helps level the playing field against insurers with nearly endless resources. The local side is just as deliberate. In Arizona, the overwhelming majority of personal-injury litigation is heard in Maricopa County — before local judges, decided by local juries, often opposed by local counsel. The firm argues, persuasively, that a Valley-based team carries “street” credibility precisely where a Phoenix case is won or lost, and that a lawyer who knows the demographics of specific communities and the trends in specific claim types in Maricopa County can value a claim accurately rather than be low-balled.
The “Quarterback” Model
A distinctive operational wrinkle follows from this structure. Per the firm’s published materials, there is no additional charge to the client for adding attorneys to a matter — whether from Lamber Goodnow itself or from one of its partner firms. The stated goal is to “quarterback” each case: assemble the best possible team, including local co-counsel where needed, for the specific issues a case presents. For matters beyond Arizona and Colorado, the firm handles nationwide work through Fennemore attorneys and associated co-counsel licensed in the relevant jurisdictions. It is a model that reads less like a billboard practice and more like a litigation war room.
Credentials That Are Externally Conferred, Not Merely Asserted
Many firms call themselves “the best.” What separates Lamber Goodnow is that a large share of its prestige is conferred by independent third parties and is verifiable. The firm and its founders hold the highest available marks across the major peer- and client-rating systems, and have been featured by national media as subject-matter authorities rather than as advertisers.
- Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent — the highest peer-review rating, reflecting top marks from fellow attorneys for legal ability and ethical standards (held by both Lamber and Goodnow).
- Perfect 10/10 Avvo rating — Avvo’s top client-facing score.
- “#1 Personal Injury Legal Team in the U.S.” — as named by Attorney at Law Magazine.
- Best Lawyers in America — Marc Lamber selected for Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs (the firm cites 2012–2019).
- Newsweek — Lamber featured among “20 Leaders — Plaintiffs’ Trial Lawyers.”
- ABA Journal cover-story recognition — named among the most technology-forward (“techiest”) lawyers in America; Lamber was profiled by Apple for innovative iPad use in practice.
- Phoenix Magazine Top Lawyer — Marc Lamber named to the publication’s Top Lawyers list.
- Super Lawyers — firm attorneys selected through the service’s peer-nomination and independent-research process.
Lamber’s personal media footprint reinforces the point. He has been featured for his legal expertise by USA Today, Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fox News, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the ABA Journal, and the Arizona Republic, among others — the kind of independently earned authority that signals substance over salesmanship.
What Lamber Goodnow Phoenix Handles
Lamber Goodnow concentrates on serious personal-injury and wrongful-death matters as a Phoenix personal injury law firm. Its published practice areas span the full range of catastrophic-injury work:
- Car, truck, and tractor-trailer collisions
- Motorcycle, bicycle, and pedestrian accidents
- Bus and other mass-transit accidents
- Aviation accidents (plane and helicopter)
- Premises liability, including slip-and-fall and negligent-security cases
- Traumatic brain injury and spinal-cord injury / paralysis
- Burn injuries and other catastrophic harm
- Animal bites and dog-bite claims
- Wrongful death
The firm works on a pure contingency model — in its words, no fee unless and until it recovers money for the client, with no out-of-pocket costs for its services — and offers free initial consultations, virtual appointments, and bilingual capability. The firm states a 99% success rate in the cases it accepts.
Track Record: How the Firm Presents Its Results
Lamber Goodnow reports having recovered more than $100,000,000 for its clients over the course of the practice, across jury trials, arbitrations, mediations, and settlements. The firm publishes representative matters — always, and correctly, with a results disclaimer. Two firm-published examples illustrate the scale and type of its catastrophic-injury work:
- $9,000,000 settlement arising from a catastrophic commercial-truck collision.
- $6,000,000 recovery in a premises-liability case involving hemiparesis (partial paralysis) resulting from a fall through a skylight.
Notably, the firm’s own results page carries exactly the kind of qualifying language Arizona requires, stating that results are not and cannot be guaranteed and that past settlements or verdicts are not indicative of future outcomes. That is the legally and ethically correct way to present recoveries — and it is the standard Awesome Attorneys should mirror.
A Genuinely Technology-Forward Practice
The firm’s embrace of legal technology is not marketing veneer — it is the basis for its ABA Journal cover recognition and its Apple profile, and it traces directly to James Goodnow’s leadership. Beyond the Google Glass and virtual-reality experiments noted above, the practice has built client-facing tools, most visibly a Personal Injury Claim Calculator that gives prospective clients a structured estimate of a claim’s value based on factors such as medical costs and lost income. The firm has also used technology as a public-safety teaching tool, publishing consumer education on privacy risks from wearable cameras and on legal remedies after major corporate data breaches. For a practice anchored in an 1885 institution, this willingness to build and teach with modern tools is a real and unusual differentiator.
In Their Clients’ Words
The most persuasive evidence for any injury firm is how clients describe being represented during the worst stretch of their lives. The testimonials below are drawn from publicly posted client reviews. A consistent theme runs through them: clients repeatedly report being treated as people in distress rather than as case files — and, strikingly, that the experience “didn’t feel like a sales pitch.”
“I was in a recent car accident, I called the top 5 injury attorneys from Google & Lamber Goodnow was the best. The lady was personal & empathetic. She knew her stuff, she talked like she’s been there & that really gave me comfort. That’s the kind of law firm I wanna work with.” — Verified client review (Google)
“I was in a bicycle accident going home from work last week; my friend connected me with this law firm, and I’m glad they did! Ann was incredibly empathetic, anticipated any questions I would have, and knew the area well enough to know exactly where the accident was. She was thorough yet concise — it didn’t feel like a sales pitch whatsoever.” — Dan T., Google review
Other clients emphasize how little the process demanded of them while they focused on recovery — a tangible expression of the firm’s “we quarterback the case” promise:
“Lamber Goodnow did a great job. We didn’t have to do anything except wait until the end of the case. They hired investigators to look into what happened. They returned phone calls promptly, and kept us informed as the case progressed. The settlement was satisfactory, and we didn’t have to go to trial.” — Verified client review (Martindale-Avvo network)
“Marc is an exceptional attorney. He is kind, caring, and compassionate. He helped my daughter and I during one of the worst times in our lives. We needed the best legal representation we could get. Marc provided that and then some. We were thrilled with the outcome of our case.” — Client of Marc Lamber (Martindale-Avvo network)
And for clients worried that a smaller or less severe case might be treated as an afterthought, several reviews speak directly to that fear:
“The attention they gave me really made me feel like I was important, even though my accident was not that severe. From the time I contacted them they were in constant communication with every step they made. The settlement I received was more than fair and done in a timely manner.” — Verified client review
Recurring names appear across the firm’s reviews — intake and case-management staff such as Karrington, Michelle, and Jenny are singled out repeatedly for being attentive, empathetic, and easy to talk to — a sign of consistency in the client experience rather than a single standout attorney.
Beyond the Courtroom: Scholarship and Public-Safety Advocacy
Lamber Goodnow Phoenix’s public profile extends past casework into education and consumer-safety advocacy — the “goodwill” layer of any serious firm profile. The firm awards the Lamber Goodnow Education Scholarships, and Marc Lamber is consistently described across his professional profiles as an esteemed public and consumer-safety advocate. Much of the firm’s national media engagement — Good Morning America, CNN, USA Today and others — has centered on safety education rather than self-promotion, and the practice has used its platform to publish consumer guidance on emerging privacy and data-breach risks. For Awesome Attorneys’ editorial purposes, this reinforces the central thesis: this is a firm whose authority is recognized by journalists, peers, and the bar — not merely purchased through advertising.
For Phoenix Readers: The Legal Backdrop (General Information)
Because this profile is written for injured Arizonans evaluating their options, a brief, accurate note on the legal landscape is useful — offered as general information, not legal advice. Two features of Arizona law shape nearly every Phoenix injury case:
- Statute of limitations. In Arizona, the deadline to file most personal-injury lawsuits is generally two years from the date of injury. Important exceptions can shorten this window dramatically — most notably, claims against a government entity are subject to a separate notice-of-claim deadline (generally 180 days) and special procedures. Deadlines are fact-specific; anyone with a potential claim should confirm theirs with a licensed attorney promptly.
- Pure comparative fault. Arizona follows a pure comparative-negligence rule, meaning an injured person may still recover even if partly at fault, with the recovery reduced by their assigned percentage of fault. Insurers often try to shift blame onto the injured party to reduce what they pay, which is one reason claimants engage experienced counsel.
This is also the backdrop against which Lamber Goodnow’s “local firepower” argument lands: a Maricopa County case is heard by local judges and juries, and a team intimately familiar with that venue is positioned to value and try a claim accurately.
The Awesome Attorneys Assessment
Lamber Goodnow Phoenix occupies a genuinely distinctive position in the Phoenix personal-injury market, and its advantages are structural facts rather than marketing claims. It is the plaintiff-side injury practice embedded within Arizona’s oldest and one of its most respected law firms. Its founder switched from defense to plaintiff’s work and brought that institutional rigor with him. Its leadership pairs a marquee trial lawyer with a Harvard-trained firm CEO who is a recognized legal-technology pioneer. Its credentials are the highest available and externally conferred. And its client reviews repeatedly describe the one thing injured people most need and least expect: to be treated as a person, not a file.
For an Arizonan injured through someone else’s negligence and trying to decide whom to trust, the firm’s pitch is unusually well substantiated: the weight of a defense-caliber institution, pointed entirely at the injured person’s recovery, on a no-fee-unless-you-win basis. Among Phoenix injury firms, that combination is rare — and it is exactly the depth, credibility, and care that defines an Awesome Attorneys-profiled practice.
METHODOLOGY & SOURCING
This profile was compiled from publicly available sources, including the firm’s own website (lambergoodnow.com) and its team, results, and practice pages; Fennemore materials; peer- and client-rating directories (Martindale-Hubbell, Avvo, Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers, Best Law Firms, FindLaw, Lawyers.com); business and consumer listings (BBB, Yelp, Facebook); national press coverage (The Wall Street Journal, ABA Journal, Newsweek and others) regarding the firm’s technology work and James Goodnow’s leadership; and publicly posted client reviews. Peer-review ratings, recovery figures, the 99% success rate, and all awards are the firm’s published claims or third-party directory ratings and are attributed as such. Client testimonials are verbatim or lightly trimmed excerpts of real, publicly posted reviews. Arizona advertising-rule references reflect ER 7.1 and related rules as summarized by the State Bar of Arizona and secondary sources; all legal statements and figures should be re-verified against primary sources prior to publication.
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This profile is an independent editorial article published by Awesome Attorneys. Awesome Attorneys does not endorse, recommend, or warrant any lawyer or law firm profiled on this site, and inclusion in this series is not paid placement. “Awesome Attorneys” is a brand name only; it is not a rating, ranking, or claim that any profiled firm is superior in any legal category.
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Facts, figures, and claims in this profile were independently researched from public sources as described in the Methodology & Sourcing section and are current only as of the research date; they are subject to change without notice, and readers should confirm any detail directly with the firm before relying on it. This notice supplements, and does not replace, the Attorney Advertising disclaimer at the top of this profile.