Dustin Furman Founding Partner

Dustin Furman is a founding partner of Furman Honick Law. He has tried hundreds of cases and recovered tens of millions of dollars for injured people and grieving families, and he has spent his entire adult life inside medical malpractice and serious injury litigation. Ask him what he is proudest of, though, and he does not start with a number. He starts with the families who still call him years later.

A courtroom career that started in high school

Dustin found his calling in a high school mock trial program. He joined as a freshman, took a leading role alongside juniors and seniors who had been on the team for years, and helped carry the program to a division championship. Public speaking never frightened him, and persuading a room came naturally, so he went looking for more of it.

At 14, he took a job at one of the area’s most prominent medical malpractice firms. He hit it off with one of the firm’s trial partners, who took him on as a mentee, and he never left. Dustin worked there through high school, stayed local for college so he could keep the job, and stayed on through law school. When his mentor left to open his own firm, he brought Dustin with him.

That meant Dustin spent close to a decade inside a malpractice practice before he ever had a license: summarizing depositions, pulling articles from medical school libraries, and combing through medical records for the one detail that would decide a case. He also sat in on multiple high-profile malpractice trials while he was still a student. He started law school at 20, graduated at 23 as the youngest member of his class, and was in the courtroom trying headline medical malpractice cases within days of being sworn in to the bar. By 27, when most of his classmates were just beginning to practice, Dustin already had five years of trials behind him.

What kept him in this work was not the courtroom itself. It was what he saw at the other end of a case, back when he was still a teenager filing paperwork in someone else’s office.

“There’s no better feeling than giving back to someone and being a voice for somebody.”

Dustin Furman

What it is like to be Dustin’s client

Furman Honick Law does not advertise heavily nor chase volume, and that is a deliberate choice about the kind of relationship Dustin wants with the people he represents. The firm takes a case only when it has the capacity to see that case all the way through. It is cliché to say, he admits, but he knows every one of his clients.

“We don’t take every case, frankly. We are selective because we know the time and effort that it takes and the cases deserve, and if we just take in everybody’s case, then we’re not really taking in anyone’s case. It’s sort of just another file, another number.”

Dustin Furman

So if you want to reach Dustin, you can reach him. You will not make one call and then be handed off. Nobody arrives at this firm on a good day. People come in after the worst thing that has ever happened to them, and the way Dustin describes his job is simple.

“When people come to us in their worst moments, at that point, you just need to be there for them, be their support, take the load off of their plate.”

Dustin Furman

The hospitals, the insurance paperwork, the calls and the fight all become his problem, so the family can put its energy into grieving, into healing, and into each other. Clients come in to pick up a check, and they are smiling, and they tell him he is part of the family now. For a household that was already stretched before the injury, that moment can change things for a generation.

Many of those families send their friends and relatives afterward. Furman Honick now hears from the second, third, and fourth generation of clients it represented years ago, and Dustin remembers them. He says the fact that they still remember him is what brings him the biggest smile.

How Dustin builds a case around a person

Dustin’s view is that the best trial lawyers are the ones who can take something enormously technical and make it simple. Jurors do not see the years of litigation behind a case, and they do not need to. They need a clear story, told without fluff, that the evidence then backs up point by point.

“Telling a compelling story that makes sense to a juror is really what matters. They can give you a very good analogy, something that a jury can cling to, stick with, and the evidence matches, and they can just be with you from the moment you open your mouth.”

Dustin Furman on what separates the best trial lawyers

That story has to come from the client, which is why the early conversations matter as much as anything that happens later. Dustin does not treat an injury as a multiple of the medical bills, and he would rather a jury never see the bills at all, because a bill is an anchor that says more about local pricing than about a human being.

“What really matters is what is that person’s story? How did this crash or how did this medical injury affect them? How has it changed their life?”

Dustin Furman

So he asks about the run someone no longer takes, the job they are not sure they can keep doing, the pain they are reminded of every day from something that happened three years ago. What has been taken from this person, what has been taken from this family, and for how long will they live with it, often 30, 40 or 50 more years. His approach to preparation is to leave no stone unturned, and he takes pride in handling his clients’ cases himself, from the earliest investigation through to verdict.

Verdicts and results

Dustin has worked on some of the largest verdicts in Maryland history, including results of $55 million and $21 million. Within the last year and a half alone, he has won multiple jury trials of more than $3 million, among the largest verdicts of the year, with each verdict averaging more than triple the last offer that was made before trial.

In the last four years, he and Allen have also taken at least ten cases that other lawyers had written off for one reason or another and turned them into high six-figure and seven-figure results. Those cases got that kind of attention for one reason. Dustin sat down with the person, learned what had actually been taken from them, and declined to treat the case as small just because an insurance company had labeled it that way.

Recognition, teaching and community

Dustin has been named to Top 40 Under 40 in Maryland by The National Trial Lawyers, selected to The Best Lawyers in America, and named a Super Lawyers, each of which goes to only a small number of attorneys. While in law school, he was lead attorney on the acclaimed National Trial Team, was selected to the American College of Trial Lawyers’ Advanced Trial Skills Master Program, and was inducted into the Royal Shannonhouse Honors Society.

He has been invited to lecture at both the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Georgetown University School of Medicine on medical-legal topics. In his spare time, he mentors Maryland high school students as a judge for the Maryland State Bar Association Mock Trial Competition, the same kind of program that started his own career.

Dustin is always accessible to his clients and goes above and beyond for their claims and cases. That client-centered approach has earned him rave reviews, which you can read on our reviews page.

Education:

• University of Baltimore School of Law; Magna Cum Laude

Bar Admissions:

• Maryland (State & Federal) and Washington, DC

Awards:

Recent Jury Verdicts:

• 2022 – $500,000 Jury Verdict Baltimore City – Premises Liability
• 2023 – $500,000 Jury Verdict Anne Arundel – Largest Premises Liability Verdict of the Year
• 2024 – $625,000 Jury Verdict Baltimore County – Car Crash
• 2024 – $175,000 Jury Verdict Baltimore City – Car Crash
• 2024 - $200,000 Jury Verdict Baltimore County - Dog Attack
• 2025 - $300,000 Verdict Charles County - Car Crash
• Millions won in jury verdicts over two years; over $2 million secured in recent months.