MacKenzie Dunham

Family law and trial experience.

MacKenzie Dunham went into family law for two reasons. It was the practice area that would put him in a courtroom most often, and it let him do something useful for the community around him. He started in Houston representing modest means clients, people who earned too much to qualify for legal aid but not enough to hire a private lawyer at full rates.

"There’s a big group of people who fall into that gap. They work hard and make a decent living, and one legal problem can set them back for years. I wanted to be the lawyer they could actually afford."

He did that work for about five years, first running a legal aid provider and then at his own firm, and it’s where most of his trial experience comes from. Temporary orders hearings in Texas run like small trials, with live witnesses and cross examination, so he was trying cases from his first weeks as a lawyer. He sat first chair in every trial at his firm and tried three cases to a jury, including a divorce jury trial that ran more than two weeks. He also served on the State Bar of Texas Legal Services to the Poor in Civil Matters Committee from 2019 to 2024.

"I’ve tried more than fifty cases at this point, and I couldn’t tell you how many protection order hearings. Trial is where I feel most at home. A lot of lawyers dread it. I look forward to it."

That comfort goes back a long way. He competed in cross examination debate in high school and debate and moot court in college. At the University of Houston Law Center he trained through the Blakely Advocacy Institute and competed on the Mock Trial and Moot Court teams all three years. In 2017 he received the Jim Perdue Sr. Trial Advocacy Award and was one of four students chosen to run a trial boot camp for Coast Guard investigators in Houston. Those investigators aren’t lawyers, but they present the Coast Guard’s administrative cases themselves, against licensed attorneys and in front of real judges.

"Teaching people who had never been to law school how to put on a case made me a better trial lawyer. You can’t hide behind jargon. You have to explain why each piece of evidence matters and what you want the judge to do with it."

Since coming to Washington in 2022, MacKenzie has tried a heavily contested divorce involving a company valued in the millions, a case that took a month to try. He has also handled international child abduction cases under the Hague Convention, and in one of them secured parenting plan provisions that kept the other parent from taking the child out of the country. He’s admitted in Washington, Texas, and the Tulalip Tribal Court, and his cases regularly involve business interests, tribal court jurisdiction, and families that cross borders.

Most of his clients come to him at one of the hardest points in their lives, and most have never been inside a courtroom. He spends the first meeting on the facts and on what the law can and cannot do with them.

"I’ll tell you when something is worth pushing on and when it isn’t. Most of my clients are working people with a mortgage and kids. I don’t spend their money on things that won’t move the case."

MacKenzie lives in Seattle with his wife and their two dogs, Duke and Mary. When he isn’t in court, he’s usually camping somewhere in Washington, brewing beer, working in the garden, or planning the next trip abroad.