Patrick D. Goodman teaches Remedies, Wills and Trusts, American Law in the Global Context, and a seminar in Law and Popular Culture. He is also the creator and co-developer of Law 101: Introduction to Legal Analysis, a new, required first-year course. He has also taught Legal Research and Writing, Written Legal Analysis, Writing for Practice, and the California Appellate Advocacy Clinic, a live-client appellate course in juvenile law he founded at the UCLA School of Law in partnership with Los Angeles County. He is a coauthor of Cracking the Case Method: Legal Analysis for Law School Success (3rd ed. West 2022).

Professor Goodman is the only faculty member to be named Senior Continuing Lecturer in the history of the UCLA School of Law. In 2010, Professor Goodman was awarded the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award, the University's highest teaching honor. In 2013, he received the UCLA School of Law's Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching. Professor Goodman has been elected the UCLA School of Law Professor of the Year by the graduating class seven times in nine years.

Prior to law school, Goodman earned a Master of Education degree from UCLA. At Columbia Law School, Goodman was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and recipient of the 1996 Jane Marks Murphy Prize for Excellence in Clinical Advocacy. After law school, Goodman joined Morrison & Foerster in Los Angeles as a litigation associate. In 1998, he began at the Los Angeles County Counsel’s Office as an attorney specializing in juvenile law and appellate practice, and he later was promoted to Senior Associate County Counsel. In November 1999, Goodman became Deputy County Counsel, a position he held before joining the UCLA School of Law faculty. Professor Goodman has served as lead counsel in over one hundred appeals, and he supervises certified UCLA law students in the California Court of Appeal.

Professor Goodman’s areas of interest also include the use of scientific evidence in the courtroom. His 1996 article Forensic Hair Comparison Analysis: Nineteenth Century Science or Twentieth Century Snake Oil? (co-authored with Clive A. Stafford Smith) has been cited in dozens of journal articles, trial briefs, and judicial opinions, as well as New Yorker magazine, and it is the lead source for the American Law Reports summary of the subject. The article helped lead the FBI in 2015 to formally acknowledge it had provided flawed forensic hair comparison evidence testimony in hundreds of criminal cases over the prior two decades.