The Law Office of Ahmad Keshavarz

Focus and the clients it represents

The firm handles consumer protection law from an office in Brooklyn, New York. Its clients are consumers who face debt collectors, credit reporting companies, and other businesses acting against them. Ahmad Keshavarz started the firm in 2000, and the work has stayed on consumer rights since then. It represents consumers across the New York City area.

Most of the caseload sits in litigation under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the federal law that governs how debt collectors may behave. The firm sues collectors in federal court when they break those rules. In my opinion, that narrow focus tells a reader something useful: these attorneys spend their days inside one body of law, so the same statute and the same courts come up again and again.

The federal law behind most of the work

Consumer protection cases like these often rest on the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Congress passed the statute in 1977 to curb abusive tactics by third-party debt collectors. It bars collectors from harassing a consumer, misstating the amount of a debt, or trying to collect money that is not due.

The law gives a consumer real tools. A collector who violates it can owe statutory damages, actual damages for harm done, and the consumer's legal fees. Courts can also order the collector to stop the conduct that broke the law. That fee-shifting piece matters, because it lets people with small claims and little money still bring a case. A firm that concentrates on this statute, as this one does, works with the same rules and remedies across most of its docket.

The issues it takes on

The site names a specific set of problems the firm takes to court. These include unlawful bank restraints and garnishments, collection on vacated judgments or debts already settled, identity theft, landlord suits over rent that is not owed, false credit reporting, and repossession that breaches the peace. Each one grows out of the same situation: a consumer pursued for money in a way the law does not allow.

How these disputes usually move

A bank restraint freezes funds in an account after a creditor wins a judgment, and a consumer often learns of it only when a card is declined. Sorting one out means checking whether the underlying judgment is valid and whether exempt money, such as Social Security or unemployment benefits, got caught in the freeze. Credit reporting disputes run through the reporting agencies first and can move into federal court when an error stays uncorrected.

Repossession that breaches the peace describes how a lender takes back property, often a car, after missed payments. State law lets a lender repossess, and it also draws a line: the agent cannot use force, make threats, or enter a closed garage to do it. When that line is crossed, the consumer may have a claim. Landlord suits for rent not owed put tenants in housing court over charges they do not actually owe, where the defense turns on the lease terms and the payment record.

Identity theft cases start once someone else opens accounts or runs up charges in a consumer's name. The cleanup involves police reports, disputes with each creditor, and fixing the credit file that the fraud damaged. Wage garnishment works differently: a creditor with a judgment can direct an employer to withhold part of a paycheck, and state limits cap how much can be taken. Each of these issue areas has its own procedure, and each turns on documents that show what really happened.

How the team is built

Two attorneys are named on the site. Ahmad Keshavarz holds a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, along with a Masters in Public Policy from the L.B.J. School of Public Affairs. He is licensed in Texas and New York, and he runs the firm from Brooklyn. His work goes to consumer protection in full, and the large majority of it is FDCPA litigation over matters such as collection on time barred debts.

Emma Caterine is a partner. She graduated from the College of William & Mary in 2012, where she received the Middleton Award, and from the City University of New York School of Law in 2018. Before joining the firm, she worked as a Pathway Intern at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Her interest in economic justice began during the Occupy Wall Street protests, a detail the site itself records.

A decision on the record

The firm points to one published case in particular. With legal services co-counsel, Keshavarz obtained the Second Circuit ruling in Arias v. Gutman, Mintz, Baker & Sonnenfeldt LLP et al., 875 F.3d 128 (2017). The court held that a debt collector who unduly prolongs legal proceedings can violate the FDCPA.

The Second Circuit is the federal appeals court covering New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, and its published decisions bind the district courts in those states. That is the level at which this ruling sits.

A published citation gives a reader something concrete to check. The decision is public, the reporter number is fixed, and anyone can read the holding in full. As a reviewer, I put weight on that kind of specificity, because it points to a real outcome in a named court.

Ties to the wider consumer bar

The firm belongs to the National Association of Consumer Advocates, a group whose members represent consumers against businesses. Keshavarz also speaks at conferences held by the National Consumer Law Center. Both connections place the firm within the national community of attorneys who work on debt and credit cases.

Those two organizations carry weight in this field. The National Consumer Law Center produces legal manuals and training used by consumer attorneys across the country, and its conferences bring those lawyers together to compare tactics on debt, credit, and foreclosure matters. Speaking at that kind of event means presenting to peers who handle the same statutes day to day.

Clients who have written publicly about the firm tend to describe a personal, approachable manner from both Keshavarz and Caterine. I offer that as a measured read of recurring themes, and I hold it lightly, since one person's experience will differ from the next. The public record shows a small firm with a defined focus in consumer protection. It names two attorneys and their credentials, and it cites an appellate decision the firm helped win.