Editor’s Note: This interview was conducted on November 21, prior to the Court of Appeals issuing its decision on FAPA and reflects information current at that time. This piece originally appeared in the December 2025 edition of MortgagePoint magazine.
Adam J. Friedman is a Managing Partner at the Legal League member firm Friedman Vartolo LLP. He presently serves as the Managing Partner of the Garden City, Jersey City, and Philadelphia offices. Friedman manages the Bankruptcy, Financial, Mid-Atlantic Foreclosure, and Technology departments of the firm. Prior to founding Friedman Vartolo, Friedman managed the Real Estate and Foreclosure divisions of Pulvers, Pulvers, Thompson & Friedman, LLP from 2010 to his departure. Friedman is admitted to practice law in Maryland, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania state courts, as well as the United States District Courts in New Jersey and the Eastern, Southern, Western, and Northern Districts of New York.
What do you think sets your firm apart in this space?
I love this question, because I truly see Friedman Vartolo as a unicorn in the default space. There are law firms with deep, high-level litigation expertise in one or two notoriously challenging states. There are also firms with a true multistate footprint, capable of managing high volumes of standard matters across multiple jurisdictions. Frankly, most firms in this space are capable of neither. We’re one of the few firms that can operate at scale and handle the highest risk matters in the country.
New York remains the most challenging litigation environment in our industry, and it has become our calling card. Our clients rely on us for litigation excellence across every state we serve, and we’ve structured our legal team to exceed that expectation. Our attorneys handle the most complex and delicate matters. Cases that require experience, precision, and an ability to balance legal, regulatory, and business considerations simultaneously.
Parallel to our litigation strength, we’ve built a true operational engine that is scalable, data-driven, and constantly evolving. We operate seamlessly across six states today, with the infrastructure to expand far beyond that. Our systems were designed for end-to-end management, blending speed on routine matters with exceptional depth on complex ones. We’re pushing the limits of what a default services firm can automate, integrating AI, workflow automation, and real-time data into every aspect of our operations. And we’re doing it with purpose: to give our attorneys the freedom to focus on judgment-heavy work and to give our clients a firm that gets stronger and faster every single year.
At our core, we’re a firm built for complexity and scale. That combination is what sets us apart.
Are there any recent court decisions or legal trends that servicers and investors should be paying closer attention to?
Several legal and regulatory developments deserve close attention right now because of potential risk movement across the industry. In New York, the statute-of-limitations landscape remains one of the most consequential. The Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act, or “FAPA,” sharply restricted a lender’s ability to stop or reset acceleration, and the following litigation centered on retroactive applicability has created real uncertainty. With the Supreme Court
declining review in U.S. Bank v. Fox, all eyes are now on the New York Court of Appeals, which is weighing retroactivity and due-process questions in Article 13 LLC v. Ponce De Leon Federal Bank. Its ruling will determine whether older accelerations are permanently timebarred or whether pre-FAPA doctrines still apply. Until then, trial and appellate courts continue to apply FAPA broadly. This may leave servicers with meaningful exposure and potential loss of enforcement rights across legacy NY portfolios.
At the federal level, the CFPB’s proposed Regulation X overhaul and the rollback of remaining COVID-19 era protections point toward earlier borrower engagement, stricter communication timelines, and intensified scrutiny of fees, credit reporting, and vendor management. Depending on Congress’s decision to fund the CFPB in 2026, these changes may directly affect cost structures, advance obligations, and may also increasingly alter performance expectations for distressed assets.
New Jersey’s Community Wealth Preservation Program, or “CWPP,” signed January 12, 2024, expands access for foreclosed-upon homeowners, next-of-kin, tenants, and nonprofit community development corporations to purchase properties at sheriff’s sales and establishes key procedural changes (including a 3.5 % deposit and 90-business-day closing period). CWPP also changed sheriff-sale dynamics by granting eligible community buyers statutory priority, thereby redefining bidding behavior and altering transfer expectations.
Maryland’s recent licensing upheaval, driven by Estate of Brown v. Ward, the Maryland Office of Financial Regulation, 2025 guidance, and the subsequent legislative fix creating a passive-trust exemption, highlights how quickly regulatory frameworks can shift. Separately, FinCEN’s nationwide residential real estate reporting rule for non-financed transfers to entities and trusts, effective December 1, 2025, will require beneficial ownership reporting for many trust-based acquisitions. This may push investors to strengthen onboarding and ownership-verification procedures for Maryland portfolios as well.
How do you see the role of law firms evolving as technology becomes more integrated into servicing and default operations?
As technology becomes more integrated into servicing and default operations, I don’t think the role of law firms disappears; I think it becomes sharper.
Currently, law firms serve two primary functions: we practice law, and we act as an informal database. Clients come to us for timelines, statutory guidance, county-specific nuances, and procedural requirements. Information that often resides in many places and comes together only through experience.
Technology is about to collapse all of that. As AI, automation, and more intelligent infrastructure take hold, much of the informational friction that exists today will be eliminated. The questions we receive today, which are challenging because systems don’t communicate with each other, will be answered instantly. Even more complex data requests, such as standardized payment histories or judgment figures, will surface cleanly, without the back-and-forth that currently characterizes the process.
When that happens, law firms won’t lose relevance; they’ll lose noise. Everything mechanical, repetitive, or based on scattered information will be automated. And that’s a good thing. Because what remains, what can’t be automated, is the core value: judgment, insight, strategy, and the ability to navigate ambiguity.
This is where our industry is headed. The firms that survive won’t be the ones built to click buttons or move volume; those models are already on borrowed time. The firms that thrive will be the ones that operate like true strategic partners. The ones that understand the nuance of litigation, pattern recognition across jurisdictions, risk calculus, negotiation dynamics, the timing of courts and judges, and the invisible forces no spreadsheet can capture.
In other words, I don’t think technology reinvents the law firm; I believe it reveals it. It strips away the commodity layer and exposes the part of the profession that matters. Automation won’t eliminate lawyers, but it will put a spotlight on those who think deeply, anticipate, interpret, and guide.
Whether that shift takes one year or 10 is almost irrelevant. The accelerant is already here. AI isn’t just a tool; it’s the pressure test that will force every firm to decide whether it wants to be a file-mover or a true advisor. And the firms that choose the latter, and build around that identity, are the ones that will define the next era of this industry.
What keeps you motivated to work in this field?
What keeps me motivated in this field is the challenge. The default industry is enormous, intricate, and constantly evolving. Most people outside the space have no sense of its true scale or the degree to which it influences the broader economy, but that scale is exactly what energizes me. Our firm has always believed that growth is a responsibility, not an optional pursuit. If you’re not improving, innovating, expanding your capabilities, and capturing new opportunities, you’re already moving backward.
This industry makes that mindset unavoidable. Nothing stays still for long: statutes shift, procedures change, technologies accelerate, and client expectations rise every single year. You can’t “master” this field once and coast, not if you operate across six states at the level we do. When you manage work at this scale, efficiency, precision, and adaptability aren’t aspirations; they’re requirements.
That’s what motivates me: the climb. The belief that there is always another layer of quality to reach, another level of efficiency to unlock, another frontier of technology to push into. We embrace the challenge because it makes us better—as operators, as attorneys, and as partners to our clients.
And there’s a larger purpose behind it. We are working to build a firm that sets an entirely new standard for what a default-services law firm can be. Whether others think that ambition is feasible isn’t the point. What matters is that continual improvement is possible, and we show up every day committed to proving it. That’s what drives me, the conviction that we can keep climbing, keep improving, and build something extraordinary in an industry that demands the absolute best from anyone who wants to lead within it.
Lastly, what is one piece of advice or perspective you’d like to leave with our audience?
If there’s one takeaway I’d offer, it’s this: in our industry, your long-term performance is determined far more by the strength of your partnerships than by the elegance of your spreadsheets.
Default servicing is often treated like a numbers business, and to an extent, it is. Volumes are large, scorecards are necessary, and data matters. But when you zoom in on actual outcomes, the differentiators aren’t found in columns and formulas. They’re found in the people you trust to help you navigate complexity: your law firms, your title teams, your diligence providers, and your property preservation partners.
Judicial tendencies, timing patterns, courtroom dynamics, and jurisdictional nuance drive timelines and portfolio success. And the organizations that consistently outperform are those that tap into their partnerships not just as vendors, but also as advisors. The clients who call us pre-purchase, asking about strategy and wanting to understand judges, opposing counsel, and title intricacies, are the clients who move faster, avoid unnecessary risk, and ultimately see materially better returns.
Servicers hold tremendous power in this ecosystem. My advice is to use that power intentionally: choose partners who provide genuine insight, communicate candidly, and are genuinely invested in your success. Whether you work with us or with someone else, work with people who elevate your decision-making, not just your file counts.
At our firm, we’ve always believed that our growth comes from helping our clients grow first. The clients who treat the relationship as a collaboration, who see us as an extension of their thinking, not just their throughput, consistently perform at the top of the industry. That’s not luck. It’s the compounding value of a trusted, strategic partnership.
In a business as complex and consequential as ours, the right partners don’t just close cases. They change outcomes.
The post Litigation Trends, FAPA Risks, and the Future of Default Law first appeared on The MortgagePoint.