Alumni Spotlight: Juan J. Dominguez
Founder, CEO, and Managing Partner of The Dominguez Firm
Transfer track to a 4-year university, 1982
Juan J. Dominguez is a familiar face across Los Angeles, widely recognized from the iconic billboards along the 5 Freeway. Behind those highly successful marketing campaigns is the founder, CEO, and Managing Partner of The Dominguez Firm. The practice has grown into one of Southern California’s leading personal injury, workers’ compensation, and employment law firms with a staff of over 120 employees.
But Dominguez’s path to success began decades earlier. In the late 1960s, he arrived in Southeast Los Angeles with his parents and five siblings, having fled Cuba at just 10 years old.
In Cuba, his parents had owned a chain of pharmacies, but in the U.S., they took factory jobs to support the family. Dominguez’s father eventually rebuilt the family business in the Inland Empire. Witnessing his parents' perseverance left an enduring mark, instilling values that fueled his own entrepreneurial ambitions.
After graduating from high school, Dominguez enrolled at Cerritos College. It was at the College where he developed the foundation and skills through general education coursework that would guide him through every stage of his academic and professional life.
He transferred to California State University, Long Beach, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Latin American and Chinese History in 1984. He later returned to Cerritos College to refine his reading and writing skills before law school, underscoring the College’s pivotal role in preparing him for a successful career in law.
During this time, Dominguez also worked as an administrative analyst in the emergency room of major trauma centers at UCLA Medical Center and St. Francis Hospital in Lynwood. There, he gained firsthand insight and deep compassion for the gravely injured. This sense of justice for those in need would come to define his career as an attorney.
Dominguez went on to earn a Juris Doctor from top-ranked University of California Hastings College of the Law in 1987 and opened his law practice that same year.
Today, Juan Dominguez is a nationally recognized, award-winning personal injury attorney.
In 2011, he was nominated Attorney of the Year by the Consumer Attorneys of California (CAOC). The Hispanic National Bar Association named him Attorney of the Year in 2013, and in 2014, the Mexican-American Bar Association presented him with its Special Recognition Award.
The Los Angeles Business Journal honored him with the Latino Business Award in 2015, and Pasadena Magazine recognized him as a Top Attorney each year from 2010 through 2019. Most recently, he was included on the 2024 Super Lawyers list for the tenth consecutive year and fifteenth time overall.
To date, Dominguez’s firm has represented over 50,000 clients, many from underprivileged communities. His work has helped recover more than $1 billion for clients across catastrophic personal injury, product liability, wrongful death, workers’ compensation, and employment law.
Through it all, Dominguez has been guided by a lesson his mother instilled in him as a child: “You can be and do whatever you want in life as long as you have ganas.” Ganas, a Spanish word meaning will or determination, has guided his approach to every challenge. His journey proves that with education, hard work, and ganas, no goal is out of reach.