Disciplinary Charges Filed Against Three More DTLA Lawyers

Friday, June 5, 2026

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Disciplinary Charges Filed Against Three More DTLA Lawyers

By Kimber Cooley, associate editor

The State Bar has filed disciplinary charges against two founding partners of the Downtown LA Law Group LLP, Daniel Azizi and Farid Yaghoubtil, and a trial attorney with the firm, Igor Fradkin, alleging that the lawyers engaged in the unauthorized practice of law in other jurisdictions without holding licenses to practice in those states.

Monday’s filings against Azizi and Yaghoubtil largely mirror a March Notice of Disciplinary Charges (“NDC”) that was filed against the third-and-final founder of the personal-injury powerhouse, Salar Hendizadeh, who left the firm last September.

Allegations against the partners center around assertions that they steered the firm to retain clients from eight different states for injuries occurring outside of California without affiliating with local counsel. The law office has faced scrutiny in recent months after obtaining a record $4 billion settlement in a sex abuse case against Los Angeles County in which some victims have purportedly alleged that they were paid to participate in the litigation.

Division of Responsibilities

According to the State Bar, the founding partners “divided responsibilities for managing day-to-day…operations such that [Yaghoubil] and Hendizadeh were primarily responsible for the pre-litigation phases…(that is, marketing, client intake, and pre-litigation settlement)” while Azizi was tasked with “supervising the litigation attorneys and non-attorney staff…, including distributing client funds.”

Monday’s notices against Yaghoubtil and Azizi provide:

“Beginning on or about December 7, 2017, and continuing through in or about September 2025, respondent-partners though only licensed to practice law in California practiced law using the DTLA firm name, and other business names,…not only in California, but also in other jurisdictions including but not limited to Texas, Florida, Maryland, Arizona, Iowa, Michigan, Virginia, and Tennessee in which none of the respondent-partners were licensed or otherwise authorized to practice law.”

Misleading Marketing Materials

The filings also highlight purportedly misleading marketing materials that appeared on websites of the firm and related businesses, saying advertisements contained “duplicate identical client testimonials purporting to be from different clients.” The NDCs explain:

“For example…the Lone Star website contained client testimonials from three purported Texas clients…about legal services provided to the clients by Lone Star, including ‘Farid from the Lone Star Injury Group’; and (b) the DTLA website contained identical client testimonials from three purported California clients [with different names]…about legal services provided to the clients by DTLA, including ‘Farid from the DTLA Law Group.’ ”

Downtown LA Law Group boasted one attorney who was also licensed to practice in Texas, Darren McBratney, but he left the firm in early 2022. According to the State Bar, the firm engaged in the practice of law in the Lone Star State both before and after McBratney’s tenure; the lawyer’s new firm allegedly sent a cease-and-desist letter in 2023, asserting that Downtown LA Law Group was improperly continuing to use McBratney’s name for marketing purposes.

Other Allegations

Charges against Fradkin center around his purported representation of a Texas woman who asserted that she was injured at a Fort Worth hotel and a Maryland mother and daughter who claimed to have been harmed during a Lyft ride in Baltimore.

In both cases, local counsel was later retained, and pro hac vice status conferred, in connection with the filing of complaints, but the disciplinary body asserted that those actions were taken years into the firm’s representation and after settlement negotiations were well underway.

Two other attorneys, John Rofael and Patrick Khalil, who have each left the firm, were identified in the NDCs as having been assigned to Texas-client matters even though they only held licenses to practice in California. No disciplinary charges appear to have been filed against them as of yesterday morning.

Azizi, a licensed attorney in California since 2010 who earned his law degree from Loyola, previously stipulated to a public reproval in 2016 relating to a case in which a client was not informed that the firm was dropping her as a client until 11 days before the statute of limitations expired. According to the State Bar’s website, Yaghoubtil and Fradkin have no prior disciplinary history.

Yaghoubtil is a graduate of the Abraham Lincoln School of Law and has been licensed to practice in California since 2012. Fradkin hails from Western State University College of Law and was admitted to the State Bar in 2014.

An unnamed spokesman for the firm responded to a request for comment yesterday, saying:

“The matters included multijurisdictional issues. Co-counsel relationships were engaged to ensure representation was at the highest possible caliber. We look forward to presenting the facts.”