CAP Volunteer of the Month – November 2021

Daniel Goodsell – Goodsell Law Group

Daniel Goodsell is the Founding Partner of Goodsell Law Group and a pro bono CAP attorney with the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada. Daniel’s firm handles estate planning, probate, and guardianship matters. Before establishing his firm, Daniel worked on adoptions and divorces; these cases moved Daniel by the impact on the children involved affected him profoundly. As he considered what community service he wanted to do as an attorney, the choice was obvious to represent children in the middle of difficult family situations. Fortunately, he received an email from the Legal Aid Center in January 2018 with information about volunteer opportunities to represent the interests of children without the resources or relationships to obtain legal protections. He became involved in the Children’s Attorneys Program (CAP) with Legal Aid of Southern Nevada.

When Daniel is not practicing law, he enjoys time with his family and providing community services through his church.

When asked why he does pro bono work, Daniel explained there are many reasons why charitable service is important to him, and many of them originate from his religious beliefs. However, he would want to help children in a difficult situation even if he did not have any religious beliefs. Daniel believes that it is always good to try to work at your highest level, and he feels that he can do the most good using his legal skills than just his skills as a manual laborer.

We asked Daniel to share a story of a memorable client and how he helped in their case. He stated he had a very young client, under one, whose parents could not care for him, but his father still loved him and wanted to be part of his life. Daniel helped craft an open adoption agreement under which a family adopted his client and provided his client’s father the opportunity to stay in his client’s life. While sharing this story, Daniel remarked, “as so many of us in this line of work say, you can never have too many people in your life who love you.”

Because of his commitment to pro bono, we honor Daniel Goodsell as our November 2021 CAP Volunteer of the Month.