In its most general sense, the practice of law involves giving legal advice to clients, drafting legal documents for clients, and representing clients in legal negotiations and court proceedings such as lawsuits, and is applied to the professional services of a lawyer or attorney at law, barrister, solicitor, or civil law notary. However, there is a substantial amount of overlap between the practice of law and various other professions where clients are represented by agents. These professions include real estate, banking, accounting, and insurance. Moreover, a growing number of legal document assistants (LDAs) are offering services which have traditionally been offered only by lawyers and their employee paralegals. Many documents may now be created by computer-assisted drafting libraries, where the clients are asked a series of questions that are posed by the software in order to construct the legal documents. In addition, regulatory consulting firms also provide advisory services on regulatory compliance that were traditionally provided exclusively by law firms.
In American jurisprudence, the Restatements of the Law are a set of treatises on legal subjects that seek to inform judges and lawyers about general principles of common law. There are now four series of Restatements, all published by the American Law Institute, an organization of judges, legal academics, and practitioners founded in 1923.
Benjamin Zachary Konop is a Senior Litigation Counsel in the Office of Enforcement at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Washington, D.C. He also was a law professor and attorney in private practice.
Ballard Spahr LLP is an AmLaw 100 law firm practicing throughout the United States. Founded in 1885, the law firm focuses on litigation, securities and regulatory enforcement, business and finance, intellectual property, public finance, and real estate matters. The firm is headquartered at 1735 Market Street in Philadelphia.
WolfBlock LLP was a large U.S. law firm and lobbying group based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The National Law Journal ranked WolfBlock the 149th-largest firm in the United States, and the 10th-largest in Philadelphia, by number of attorneys. The firm was known for being one of the oldest law firms in Philadelphia.
The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 is a federal statute passed by the United States Congress and signed by U.S. President Barack Obama on May 22, 2009. It is a comprehensive credit card reform legislation that aims "to establish fair and transparent practices relating to the extension of credit under an open end consumer credit plan, and for other purposes." The bill was passed with bipartisan support by both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, commonly referred to as Dodd–Frank, is a United States federal law that was enacted on July 21, 2010. The law overhauled financial regulation in the aftermath of the Great Recession, and it made changes affecting all federal financial regulatory agencies and almost every part of the nation's financial services industry.
The National Jazz Museum in Harlem is a museum dedicated to preservation and celebration of the jazz history of Harlem, Manhattan, New York City. The idea for the museum was conceived in 1995. The museum was founded in 1997 by Leonard Garment, counsel to two U.S. presidents, and an accomplished jazz saxophonist, Abraham David Sofaer, a former U.S. district judge who gave the initial gift in honor of his brother-in-law Richard J. Scheuer, Jr., and matching funds from the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation. For more than 15 years, the museum was based in East Harlem at 104 East 126th Street.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is an agency of the United States government responsible for consumer protection in the financial sector. CFPB's jurisdiction includes banks, credit unions, securities firms, payday lenders, mortgage-servicing operations, foreclosure relief services, debt collectors, and other financial companies operating in the United States. Since its founding, the CFPB has used technology tools to monitor how financial entities used social media and algorithms to target consumers.
Hollister K. Petraeus is a retired Assistant Director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), where she headed up the Office of Servicemember Affairs. She retired on January 12, 2017. Her work at the CFPB centered around educating service members on sound financial management and protecting them against predatory lending and cons. She is the wife of retired General David Howell Petraeus.
Disputes between consumers and businesses that are arbitrated are resolved by an independent neutral arbitrator rather than in court. Although parties can agree to arbitrate a particular dispute after it arises or may agree that the award is non-binding, most consumer arbitrations occur pursuant to a pre-dispute arbitration clause where the arbitrator's award is binding.
JAMS, formerly known as Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services, Inc. is a United States–based for-profit organization of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) services, including mediation and arbitration. H. Warren Knight, a former California Superior Court judge, founded JAMS in 1979 in Santa Ana, California. A 1994 merger with Endispute of Washington, D.C. made JAMS into the largest private arbitration and mediation service in the country. It is one of the major arbitration administration organizations in the United States. As of 2017, JAMS has 27 resolution centers, including its headquarters in Irvine, California and centers in Toronto and London. JAMS specializes in mediating and arbitrating complex, multi-party, business/commercial cases.
Financial CHOICE Act is a bill introduced to the 115th United States Congress in 2017 that would, if enacted, roll back "many of the protections in the landmark Dodd-Frank 2010 federal law, including the "strongest" Wall Street "regulations from the financial crisis. The legislation passed the House 233–186 on June 8, 2017. The 600-page legislation was crafted by Congressman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), chair of the House Financial Services Committee.
Keith A. Noreika is an American lawyer who specializes in the regulation of financial institutions. He served as Acting Comptroller of the Currency from May 5, 2017, to November 27, 2017, following the 30th Comptroller of the Currency, Thomas J. Curry, and preceding the 31st Comptroller of the Currency, Joseph Otting. Noreika rejoined the law firm of Simpson Thacher on January 8, 2018. He joined Patomak Global Partners as Executive Vice President and Chairman of its Banking Supervision and Regulation Group on July 5, 2022.
Deepak Gupta is an American attorney known for representing consumers, workers, and a broad range of clients in Supreme Court and appellate cases and constitutional, class action, and complex litigation. Gupta is the founding principal of the law firm Gupta Wessler LLP and a lecturer at Harvard Law School, where he is an instructor in the Harvard Supreme Court Litigation Clinic.
Rohit Chopra is an American consumer advocate who is the 3rd director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and previous member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Prior to this, Chopra served as assistant director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a federal agency tasked with consumer protection in the financial sector. Chopra also served within the CFPB as the agency's first Student Loan Ombudsman, an office created by the Dodd–Frank Act.
Kathleen Laura Kraninger is an American government official who served as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) from December 11, 2018, until her resignation on January 20, 2021. Before that, she served in the White House Office of Management and Budget during the Trump administration.
Jessica Silver-Greenberg is a business reporter for The New York Times whose investigative reporting on consumer financial issues has been cited in the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Congress.
David Uejio is an American government official who is the chief strategy officer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. His nomination to serve as assistant secretary of housing and urban development for fair housing and equal opportunity was returned to the President in January of 2022 and renominated the next day. He previously served as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) since January 20, 2021.
Oren Bar-Gill is an Israeli-American lawyer, economist, and academic. He is William J. Friedman and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard Law School, and a Sackler Fellow at Tel Aviv University. He is most known for his research in contract law, law and economics, and behavioral law and economics.
