When teachers told Farshad he was “never going to make it,” he decided to prove them wrong.
At school, while classmates were buried in homework, he was busy flipping second-hand phones on eBay, haggling with shop owners for spare parts, and reselling refurbished handsets to kids who’d lost theirs at parties.
“I’d buy little flip phones like LG VX 4900s and Motorola Razrs for about $75 and sell them for $200,” he recalls. “It was a decent side hustle.”
That hustle never left him. Raised largely on his own after his parents split — with his mum gone and his dad living abroad — Farshad learned early to depend on himself. “From 13, I figured out how to take care of myself. I decided I was going to make myself a success.”
By his teens, he was juggling school, DJ gigs until 4am, and small businesses on the side, all to fund his own education. Teachers dismissed him as a “troublemaker” destined to go nowhere. Instead, he went on to graduate from UCLA in 2010 and earn a law degree from Pepperdine University in 2014.
Still, he didn’t rush into the legal world. At UCLA, he’d made connections with athletes through workouts and nightlife, and by the time he left law school, he was earning well as a DJ and working with players on endorsements. “The 9 to 5 never appealed to me,” he admits.
The turning point came during the pandemic. With sports and entertainment shut down, Farshad took the bar exam — passing, and soon after launching his own firm with help from his cousin, a personal injury lawyer. A bad car accident of his own also pushed him to offer better representation than he’d experienced.
That firm, E5quire Law, has since become one of the world’s first fully virtual practices. Last year, it secured more than $5m in settlements — without spending a cent on marketing.
Farshad, who has 1.6m Instagram followers under the handle @e5quire, built his brand before his firm. “People told me, ‘You can’t be a DJ and a lawyer.’ But all it’s done is grow the brand exponentially,” he says.
Now 37, based in California with his wife — “the driving force behind my success” — and their three dogs, he continues to run his multi-million-dollar law business while still managing athletes and influencers.
“I just look at my incredible, beautiful wife and think, ‘Yeah, I made it.’”
