CFPB is hiring attorney-advisors amid looming layoffs

• Key Insight: A higher volume of litigation necessitates the hiring of more defense and appellate counsel.
• What’s at Stake: A shortage of attorneys could delay rulemakings and weaken the agency’s defense in federal courts. 
• Supporting Data: By some estimates, about 500 employees have left the agency since the Trump administration took over and Vought told employees to “stop working and stand down.” 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is hiring attorneys to defend the agency in appellate litigation.

The CFPB announced in an internal email last week that it has two job openings for attorney-advisors in the legal division of the bureau’s Office of Litigation. The internal email was sent Oct. 1 to the bureau’s enforcement staff from Rebecca Gelfond, the bureau’s chief of staff for enforcement,.

Experts said the CFPB needs to beef up its legal defense staff because the agency faces so many lawsuits and is working to issue rulemakings to reverse existing rules put into place under the Biden administration. The jobs involve providing legal advice and guidance “to Bureau clients on all relevant legal matters,” the email states. 

The internal hiring is unusual because of the ongoing lawsuit with the agency’s union and the fact that the majority of staff at the agency are not actually working, but are being paid, despite the government shutdown. 

The CFPB’s acting Director Russell Vought was sued by the National Employee Treasury Union in February over Vought’s efforts to fire up to 90% of the bureau’s staff. For now, the agency has been enjoined by a court order from firing employees or engaging in any reduction-in-force, or RIFs.

So many CFPB employees have left the CFPB that it now is offering jobs within the bureau to enforcement attorneys. Some suggest that because Vought has said enforcement and supervision are not core functions, jobs in the legal division could be shielded from RIFs. 

The legal and enforcement divisions at the CFPB are two separate entities that perform different functions and require different skillsets. The legal division handles all litigation and advises the rest of the agency, including enforcement and rulemaking divisions, on what is legal and permissible. Enforcement, by contrast, builds cases against supervised financial institutions.

Both divisions have lost staff since Vought took over in February, with some estimating that at least 500 employees have departed since that time. Of those, roughly 90 attorneys have left the enforcement division, which has roughly 160 staffers, a 35% drop. That brain drain that has made it more difficult for Vought to accomplish his regulatory objectives, even if they are deregulatory in nature. 

The email described the attorney-advisor jobs as providing “legal representation for the CFPB in all phases of litigation and trial and an appellate fora.” The attorney-advisors’ duties involve drafting and responding to motions, pleadings and other legal filings, handling all aspects of discovery, conducting negotiations and representing the CFPB at oral argument, the email states. 

Attorneys also counsel clients, including the bureau’s leadership and senior staff, “with respect to legal compliance, litigation risk and other issues,” the email states, including “collaborating with the Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission, and prudential regulators and others in the litigation of cases relative to the bureau’s consumer protection mission.”

The jobs involve providing legal advice and collaborating with other agencies on consumer protection cases. 

Many former and current CFPB employees think Vought has engaged in a prolonged campaign to alienate the bureau’s staff. Vought, who also serves as the director of the Office of Management and Budget, has said that he wants federal workers — who used to be called civil servants but now are referred to as “the deep state” — to be “traumatically affected.” He also has said that when federal workers wake up in the morning “we want them to not want to go to work.” 

Last week President Trump posted on X a montage of Vought depicted as the mythological Grim Reaper, in a black cap and scythe, to lyrics mimicking Blue Oyster Cult’s 1976 hit “The Reaper,” while federal employees are depicted as zombies in an unemployment line. 

The CFPB did not respond to a request for comment. 

CFPB legal attorneys also file amicus briefs to help courts decide significant questions of federal consumer financial law and review records of lawsuits by or against the CFPB in which the decision was unfavorable to the agency. The attorneys would then determine whether to recommend an appeal to a higher court. 

In addition, the email states that the attorneys research and draft final appellate determinations of administrative Freedom of Information Act appeals, and facilitate consideration of and responses to subpoenas seeking confidential CFPB materials.