Adam Deutsch
I have been practicing consumer rights litigation since 2010 and running Northeast Law Group as its founder since 2014. The firm is, for now, primarily me — supported by colleagues I co-counsel with on larger matters and by an associate or contract attorney when caseload requires it. Clients work directly with me from initial call through resolution.
How I came to this work
I started practicing law in New Jersey in 2010, in the middle of the foreclosure crisis. My first job was at a firm representing homeowners — the kind of practice that existed because nearly one in fifty New Jersey homes was in foreclosure proceedings. I was twenty-six. The work taught me what was possible when federal consumer protection statutes were used aggressively against well-funded institutional adversaries, and it taught me what it actually feels like to represent someone whose home, credit, and stability are on the line.
I spent the next several years building expertise in the federal consumer statutes — the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, the Truth in Lending Act, and the state consumer protection laws that operate alongside them. In 2014 I opened Northeast Law Group. The firm has been my professional home since.
The substance of the work has not changed. I represent individuals against companies that have violated their rights under consumer protection law. The companies are larger, the procedural posture is sometimes different, the mix of individual and class matters varies year to year — but the core of the practice is the same as it was at the beginning. I take cases I believe in, work them the way they deserve to be worked, and use the fee-shifting structure of the underlying statutes to make sure my clients are not bearing the cost of holding the other side accountable.
Since founding Northeast Law Group, that work has produced millions of dollars in recoveries for consumer clients — actual damages, statutory penalties, and the attorney’s fees that fee-shifting statutes direct the wrongdoer to pay. The volume matters less than what it represents: a working demonstration that the consumer protection laws Congress and the Massachusetts legislature passed can actually be enforced by individual people against well-resourced businesses, when those laws are used carefully.
Earlier work
Before I built my consumer practice, I served as habeas corpus counsel for two detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. That work was a formative experience — it taught me, early in my career, what the practice of law can mean when the institutional weight on the other side is overwhelming and the client has no one else. I am a contributing editor to The Guantanamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law (NYU Press, 2009), a collection of accounts written by attorneys who represented detainees during that period.
Bar admissions and courts
Admitted in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Wisconsin. Practicing primarily in Massachusetts, with selected New Jersey matters as cases arise. Admitted to practice in the federal district courts of those jurisdictions, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and the Supreme Court of New Jersey.
Education
Seton Hall University School of Law, J.D., 2010
Rutgers University, B.A., 2007
Recognition
Selected to Super Lawyers (Thomson Reuters), Massachusetts Consumer Law
Member, National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA)
Featured Attorney – Consumer Protection (Avvo)
Speaking & publications
Speaking
Keynote speaker, Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers annual gala (Massachusetts), 2024
Panelist, Lawyer Assistance Programs: Leveraging Strategic Innovations, American Bar Association National Conference for Lawyers Assistance Programs, Springfield, MA, 2023
CLE lecturer, Becoming a Better Lawyer by Applying Principles of 12-Step Recovery, National Consumer Law Center Annual Conference, Seattle, WA, 2022
Panelist, National Business Institute Foreclosure Bootcamp, Newark, NJ, 2015
Panelist, Mortgage Foreclosure Litigation CLE, New Brunswick, NJ, 2013
Panelist, Bench Bar CLE General Equity, Morristown, NJ, 2012
Publications
Attorney Liability in Lien Enforcement: The Untapped Potential of the FDCPA, 42 Rutgers Law Record 205 (2015)
Contributing editor, The Guantanamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law (NYU Press, 2009)
Op-ed contributor, The Hill, NJ Spotlight, New Jersey Star-Ledger
Media
Featured in coverage by The New York Times, National Public Radio, and American Public Media on matters relating to consumer protection litigation and Guantanamo representation.