The Law Offices of Richard N. Gottlieb

Focus and practice areas

Bankruptcy runs through everything this Boston firm handles. The work covers Chapter 7, Chapter 11 and Chapter 13 filings, for consumers and for businesses.

Alongside the filings sit creditors' rights matters, litigation in state and federal courts, and commercial collection work for banks and other creditors. That collection practice matters. It means the firm sees the same disputes from both sides of the table.

The client list reflects that range. The firm represents debtors, creditors and trustees, which are three positions that appear in the same bankruptcy proceeding with different interests attached.

What the chapter mix suggests

Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 are the consumer workhorses: liquidation in one case, a repayment plan in the other. Chapter 11 belongs mostly to businesses that want to keep operating while they restructure debt.

Handling all three under one roof means a client who arrives assuming one path can be steered toward another. In my opinion, that flexibility is worth something at the intake stage, when the right chapter is often unclear.

How the team is built

Richard N. Gottlieb is the principal, and the site names him as the attorney handling the work. The firm's structure is straightforward: one lawyer, with his name on the door.

He was admitted to practice in Massachusetts in 1986, and has focused on bankruptcy for more than 34 years. He opened his own office in June 1996 and has served Massachusetts clients under that banner ever since.

Training and credentials

Gottlieb earned his Juris Doctor cum laude from the New England School of Law in Boston. He followed it with a Master of Laws in American Banking Law Studies from Boston University School of Law.

That LLM is worth pausing on. Banking law and bankruptcy law overlap heavily once creditors, secured claims and lending institutions enter the picture, and a graduate degree in the former gives a bankruptcy lawyer a working vocabulary on the lender's side of a case.

He also holds Board Certification in both Consumer and Business Bankruptcy Law from the American Board of Certification, first certified in 1995. Two certifications from that body, covering both the consumer and the business track, is a marker a reader can check independently.

What the record shows

From 1990 to 1996, Gottlieb was the primary bankruptcy counsel for the FDIC in New England. The FDIC handles failed banks, which means the bankruptcy work attached to that role involves institutional creditors and distressed loan portfolios at scale.

Those six years ended when he opened his own practice, and the timeline is continuous. Government bankruptcy work, then private practice in the same field, with no gap in between.

As a reviewer, I find that sequence useful because it explains where the firm's creditor-side work comes from. A lawyer who spent the early nineties representing a federal banking regulator brings that experience to the commercial collection files the firm takes on today.

Certification timing

The 1995 board certification date lands during the FDIC years, a year before he opened his own office. He arrived in private practice already certified in consumer and business bankruptcy law by an outside body.

Where the firm works

The office is in downtown Boston, and the firm's stated service area covers Boston and surrounding communities across Middlesex and Suffolk counties. Both counties feed the same federal bankruptcy court district, so the geography tracks the venue where the cases are heard.

Bankruptcy is a federal practice with heavy state-law overlay: exemptions, property rights and collection procedures vary by state. A firm that has worked Massachusetts filings since 1996 has been operating under one exemption scheme for close to three decades.

Reading the listing as a prospective client

Someone weighing this firm has several checkable facts to work with. The bar admission year, the board certification and the FDIC posting can all be verified through sources outside the firm's own website, which is the kind of claim a directory like this one prefers.

The firm publishes no case results, no client counts and no rankings. What it does publish is a career history with dates attached, and dates are easier to test than adjectives.

A consumer facing a Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 filing will find a lawyer whose practice has centered on that work since the Clinton administration. A business owner considering Chapter 11, or a bank chasing a commercial debt, will find the same attorney with a banking law LLM and a regulator's résumé behind him.

In my opinion, the clearest signal in this listing is the pair of board certifications. The American Board of Certification requires bankruptcy lawyers to sit an examination and meet experience thresholds, and holding both the consumer and business credentials since 1995 puts a verifiable standard behind the practice description.

Gottlieb has run this office from the same Boston address since June 1996, handling bankruptcy filings, creditors' rights and commercial collection for clients across two Massachusetts counties.