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We were honored to host former New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin on our live webinar on January 17, 2025 where I conducted a "fireside chat" with him that, because of its popularity, was later repurposed on our weekly podcast show, Consumer Finance Monitor. At that time, Matt spoke passionately about the evolving landscape of consumer protection and how his office was preparing to fill the anticipated gap left by efforts to scale back the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
Fast forward to today and Matt has taken that commitment to public-interest legal work into the private sector. Former Attorney General Matt Platkin has launched his own law firm, Platkin LLP, bringing together a team of seasoned litigators from his former office to tackle some of the most pressing legal challenges of our time.
Located in New Jersey, Platkin LLP is positioning itself as a mission-driven boutique firm focused on high-impact civil litigation and investigation. The firm's practice areas include consumer protection, antitrust, technology accountability, gun violence prevention, and democracy protection — fields that echo many of the priorities Matt emphasized during his tenure as Attorney General.
In a widely shared article in The New Jersey Globe announcing the launch, Matt said the firm would use "the law to drive meaningful change" and continue the work of holding powerful corporations and institutions accountable when they harm the public. He was recently appointed a distinguished Scholar in Residence at the Center for Law and Public Trust at NYU Law School.
Platkin's move to a private practice public interest firm seems to part of a trend by former government enforcement lawyers to do that. Recently, Eric Halperin, the former head of Enforcement at the CFPB during the Biden Administration (along with two of his colleagues from the CFPB joined Protect Borrowers as senior fellows to launch a strategic enforcement project focusing on a new initiative that will use legal and policy levers to challenge products and practices that exploit workers, consumers, and small business owners.
Takeaway: This trend underscores a point that we have been telling our consumer financial services clients during the Trump Administration. While the CFPB does not pose a threat at least for the remainder of the Trump administration, state Attorneys General and private class action and public interest lawyers with government enforcement experience have filled part of that void and pose a real threat to banks and consumer financial services companies that are no longer giving priority to compliance responsibilities.
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