Khurram: Sam Levine, I am excited to have you back.
Sam Levine: Great to be back.
Khurram: so I I have to start with a quote, a quote from your previous episode. And for for for context, you were at the FTC at the time, and you were discussing your path and how you got there, and some experience you acquired before you went to law school while you're at Harvard Law. And you were coming about people pursuing prestigious paths, and of course, from from schools like Harvard Law, of course, any number people do. And You said here there were certain career paths that were sort of associated with being sufficiently prestigious for Harvard graduates. People should look beyond that. People should look at local government, state government, legal aid. and this is why you're at the FTC. And fast forward now you are in New York leading the Department of Consumer Work Protection. And so a a really interesting prescient comment you made about yourself. I wonder if at the time you thought that that you would Could you see yourself doing that? I mean, you clearly contemplate that as a possibility, but how how realistic did that seem as as what you'd want to do next from the FTC and in applying the skills you've acquired so far?
Sam Levine: Well again, it's it's great to be back and looking back on our last conversation together, I'm not sure what exactly was in my head. I will tell you, I will confess, I thought we were gonna have another four years in the federal government. I was already making plans in twenty twenty four for what I wanted to see at the FTC for a a second term, as it were. that did not come to pass, of course, and after the twenty twenty four election I did need to start thinking about all right, what am I gonna do next? and I did think back, I guess, to the same advice I've given to countless law students and I shared on your podcast, which is that there's incredible work happening at the local level, there's incredible work happening at the state level. And that is where I started to turn my eyes. And even before I started at D CWP when I was working as an academic fellow at Berkeley, my focus was on supporting state and local enforcement. So I can't say that in twenty twenty four I was planning to return to local government imminently, but certainly when the American people in some ways made that decision for me, it's where I turned to because I knew the important work that happens there.
Khurram: So when you're at Berkeley, what what's the thesis you development for how to approach state and and local enforcement?
Sam Levine: Well, I really wanted to be very practical. I knew what it's like to be an infor to be an enforcer. I know what it's like to hear from think tanks and interest groups that we should do X or do Y. And I had some sense of what is actually useful. And what I really tried to do in my time in twenty twenty five at Berkeley Was give lawmakers, give enforcers really concrete tools and areas where they could use their authorities to make the economy more fair. So I did a paper, for example, on surveillance pricing with Berkeley and Vanderbilt. My co-author was Stephanie Wim. And we really focused on, we had a whole appendix to the report where, all right, we said all these things. Here are concrete tools states have right now, without additional legislation needed, that they can use to Crackdown and pricing abuses. And we really did spend a lot of time on that report specifically looking at state authorities. I think we had a table in there and what they could do. And then we followed up on the release of that report by meeting with a whole bunch of state regulators. We had a convening at Georgetown, we had follow-up meetings with states. So it was very intentional about trying to shape state enforcement and support state enforcement rather than just putting a paper out into the universe hoping for some good. press and and moving on. We really tried to build a foundation for something longer term.
Khurram: And so it's it's interesting because it it seems to me that you have different lenses on how to accomplish ends you have. So you you you have you have certain goals that you want to promote with your skills as a lawyer around consumer worker welfare. And so you're capable of pursuing it using different techniques to operate at different levels. but I I think one of the most Remarkable approaches has been this very bottom-up approach that you've used. And so I'm also in your in your previous episode, something talked about with the foreclosure work you did. so you you know, while you were at Harvard Law, you you were involved in in foreclosure advocacy, and then eventually ended ended up arguing before the Massachusetts Supreme Court on a key issue regarding regarding this issue. But so along the way, you had a mentor, David Grossman, who would take Harvard Legal Aid Bureau students around on a bus tour to neighborhoods that were being actually impacted by foreclosure. And so you had a sense of the texture of the impact, or you'd see whole blocks are affected by foreclosure. So you could really wrap your head around the tangibility of that. I feel like that too was very prescient for the work you're doing now because. Something in our conversations you've underscored is the two related aspects of your work now, the departure from from the FTC is the velocity, but then the proximity. And so I wonder if you you can talk some more about the you know, building on those previous experiences of the tangibility of your exposure to a legal issue and and how that's playing out now today in in New York for you.
Sam Levine: Well, I'm really glad you brought up David Grossman, my really incredible mentor at at Harvard Law School, who passed away a decade ago. there's now a foundation in his honor to support law graduates going into the public interest law. We just celebrated the ten year anniversary. And yeah, one of his big focuses was on bottom up movement lawyering and what lawyers can do. not to just sort of have fun in court making interesting arguments, but actually use their skills to improve people's lives and and to do so through a model that makes the client the real principle, makes the tenants, the workers, the consumers the real principles, rather than having a lawyer driven strategy. And I really do feel like now being in local government I've come full circle. I think, you know, when I was at the Federal Trade Commission We were a little bit more removed from everyday people, right? We were in Washing you know, I was in this nineteen thirties building in Washington. I was reviewing lawsuits. It was a joyful experience and we did a lot of good for a lot of people. I'm very proud of it. but it was a little bit more separated from the people who were trying to serve. New York City is very different. it's very much on the ground. When we announce big cases, money back to workers, we'll typically announce them in a room full of the workers who are gonna be getting those checks. when we wanted to roll out a new law giving delivery workers access to bathrooms when they pick up food from a restaurant, I was on site at an organizing center handing out the bathroom cards to that the delivery workers could use and answering questions about you know what happened. If they get resistance, what happens if the bathrooms out of order? Very practical everyday things that would never make it into a Supreme Court brief or into an appellate brief, but of the day-to-day ways that people actually experience the law and people actually experience economic injustice. So I really feel in in this job, and I think this is one of the beautiful things about local government, a real connection to yes, let's draft the right law. Let's defend it in court with the right briefs. Let's do all the things of traditional lawyering that are necessary to write and and sustain good laws. But let's also be people. Let's also understand how they're affecting actual people. Let's let's also make sure they're actually working on the ground. And that's been one of the really fulfilling things about this job for me.
Khurram: Do you so when you think about impact that skills, you know, going back to the work you're doing in Berkeley and and working with other enforcers, you know, that's rewarding its own way. Is it that you find this the tangibility of literally being in a room with people that you are impacting? Do you find that more more gratifying? Or like how how how how does this play out for you apart from the skills requiring, i is there a difference in personal gratification between one or the other or is it about the same?
Sam Levine: It's it is gratifying, but it's also humbling. Right? You know, I'll I'll go back again to this bathroom card example. The city passed a law that said delivery app companies in their contracts with the restaurants need to require the restaurants to let delivery workers in to use the bathroom. Very reasonable law. But again, when I was meeting with actual delivery workers, all sorts of questions came up that weren't necessarily contemplated when the law was drafted. You know, what if what if the restaurant does this? What if the restaurant retaliates against you? What if the restaurant says bathroom is out of order but is letting its customers in? Again, these are sort of very much day-to-day questions. These are not the stuff of cert petitions to the Supreme Court. But this is actually what it means to do economic justice work on the ground. This is actually what is required to translate well intentioned laws into improvements in people's lives. So hearing firsthand what impact these laws can have, should have, is is very gratifying. 'Cause you can hear the experiences of folks who had to put up with truly inhumane conditions before these laws were in place. But it's also humbling and seeing that even the best written law doesn't always contemplate every every dimension of an individual's experience. And going being able to go back to the office and say, All right, what are we gonna do about this? What are we gonna do about that? How can we make sure that the goals of these laws actually translate into improvement in people's lives? And I guess that's both humbling and gratifying as an attorney.
Khurram: Can you give an example of something you let's say in this bottom-up approach, you know, something you learned, you know, from from the mechanical application of some law and like all the you know reasonable but you know maybe not obvious applications of it or or or or or potential obstacles to application. there's something you learn in that process that fed back into something upstream about a strategy for. working with lawmakers to pass laws that achieve goals that the city wants to achieve or enforcement strategy. Is there some something that went from bottom to up that you can a specific example?
Sam Levine: Yeah, I mean absolutely one of the things that New York City has been a national leader on is protected time off. It used to be called earned safe safe and sick leave, where if you're an employee in New York City, you're entitled to forty to fifty six hours of paid time off and then a d additional unpaid time off again for for for different reasons. but what we heard over and over again, what I have heard personally over and over again from employees is that These rights exist on the books. These rights even exist in their HR manuals. But day to day, when people take time off, they get batteries of questions when they try to take time off, they get cross-examined, they feel like they can face retaliation, they can face even the loss of their job for demanding to take time off. So one of the things we did this year is we put out a report on protected time off benchmarks. where we analyzed data on how much, for example, sick time workers take off in a typical industry. And there's there's a lot of data out on this. And we said If you're looking at an individual company in in must in in a given industry and the employees are taking far less time off than is the norm for that industry based on this data that we're putting in this report, that is a strong indicator that the policies on paper are not translating into actual improvement in worker well being. That's kind of the smoke that should leave in for lead enforcers to follow up and investigate. That is the strategy we've taken up to enforce the law in this area, but it's also a strategy that we are actively sort of you know proselytizing, encouraging other enforcers and employers who want to do right by their employees to study because it it's it's a very clear example that we learn from our conversations with workers of where the goals of a law aren't always reflected in the day-to-day experiences of people on the ground.
Khurram: Can you give some other examples of data-driven approaches your HC is taking? because that I guess that that too is maybe you can say that's call it bottom up, where you're just, you know, making sense data. What what you know what what's the norm? What should we expect here? it sounds like that's one way to use data. How how else is your HC using data to determine enforcement priorities or gaps?
Sam Levine: Well, I think one of the most exciting ways we're doing that is through our minimum pay rate enforcement. So in New York City, delivery workers are entitled to a minimum pay that our department sets. That minimum pay is and and it it's more complicated than it sounds. That's time that they're delivering that also accounts for on call time. The time they're, you know, might be sitting around waiting for an order. We get data constantly from the app companies on how much they're paying their workers. and we analyze whether they're paying them enough. And this is a very proactive enforcement strategy. This is an area where workers don't always know if they're being underpaid, because it's often opaque. It's often workers always all don't always know exactly how many hours they worked or exactly the formula by which they're according to be paid. And that opacity is something I think that in other jurisdictions companies take advantage of. And the great thing about the way we've set up our enforcement regime in New York City is that the heavy lift is on us. We have a whole team, we launched a new division this year, research and analytics division, specifically focused on ingesting this data on how much workers are getting paid, how many hours they are working, and making sure the companies are paying them enough. And if you look at our minimum pay rate enforcement. Sometimes it comes from worker complaints. Sometimes it comes from companies actually realizing on their own that they underpaid people. And we really appreciate when companies do that. That's the right thing to do. But a lot of the time, most of the time, it comes from proactive monitoring by our staff to make sure that workers are getting paid. They deserve it. And by the way, I really think that's a model for governance, a model where the burden isn't on working people. the burden is frankly on the government to make sure that people are getting paid what they're entitled to. So we're working to ramp that up, to invest more resources in those tools so that we can identify lawbreakers more quickly and get money back to people more quickly. But that principle that we're going to do our own data-driven enforcement rather than simply relying on complaints from workers, I think is a really important one and that I hope to spread to other parts of our work.
Khurram: You've referenced a couple of times companies self regulating, self recognizing when they should be doing the right thing, let's say, or or following the law, let's say. are there at the city level, are there different mechanisms for carrots and sticks at the than than at the federal level? what what are you seeing that's been effective?
Sam Levine: That's an interesting question. I think to me it's not so much about carrots and sticks, it's about what the culture is at these companies. And depending on that culture, you might need to bring out some carrots and sticks. I'll give you another example from the same area, the same area of our work. When the city implemented minimum pay for restaurant delivery workers, many of the app companies, well, two of the app companies, not many of them, responded. by changing their interface deliberately to make it harder for consumers to tip their drivers. Previously you would you could set a tip in the course of ordering your meal. After they made these changes, c consumers couldn't tip unless they affirmatively took a step after they put in their order. What did this mean? It led to more than half a billion dollar fall in tips for New York City workers, was really quite devastating, in terms of how much it reduced their income. So we responded with some sticks. the city responded by passing a law prohibiting that kind of I consider it deceptive design interface and making it easier for consumers to tip. And we were really pleased that a couple weeks ago we were able to announce a significant already more than a hundred million dollars in additional tips for New York City delivery workers in 2026. But again, one of the lessons here is yes, we can respond with the stick, but it also has to do with the culture of a company. Are you a company that wants your workers to thrive, wants consumers to be able to support them? Or are you a company that for whatever reason, maybe you don't like the law, maybe you wanna get back at your workers? I I don't wanna speculate, decides that you're gonna go out of your way to make it harder for people to tip your workers. I think that's the kind of culture I think that leads to more sticks. I think for companies that did not change their tipping interface and tipping held study, they're doing just fine. so I think you do see different cultures of different companies and we'll and and we respond with whatever tools, be they a carrot or a stick, to make sure that these laws live up to their goals.
Khurram: Why why would a company care about whether their w workers are getting tips? Is there just is it the administrative burden of of distributing the tips?
Sam Levine: Well what what some of these companies have said is that tipping is a tax and that consumers shouldn't be forced to tip and I completely agree. But going out of your way to hide tipping options, which is what two of the largest providers were doing, struck me as retaliatory 'cause they didn't like that the workers were getting paid more. Again. I would leave to them to explain for themselves why they made that decision. but at the end of the day we didn't take it lying down. We responded by changing the law and now you're seeing those tips go back up.
Khurram: We've previously talked about every organization has finite resources and has to allocate them. And I think that's an interesting question to explore about how anyone allocates their their priorities with if it's time or financial resources or or whatever. And so you've referenced both workers and consumers a number of time. Between those two buckets, how do how do you allocate time to those? Is is there something you're doing? You know, you've got some policy objective and and and that's something on an ex ante basis, you're able to say, here's how much time we're gonna allocate to work to consumers. So much we're underscoring here is the bottom up component where maybe there's more issues that are right to one. Like how do you think about how to how to distribute your administrative priorities among these two buckets?
Sam Levine: Yeah, it's it's an important question and in so many ways it's the most important question any agency leader needs to confront 'cause there are never never enough resources to to support all of all of the things that are important for an agency to do. in the first instance, when people come to us with financial issues, whether on the worker side or on the consumer side, we try to address it. If you're a consumer who got ripped off, you can file a complaint with us, nyc.gov slash consumers, or call three one one. We will mediate that complaint. I tested this out myself a couple months ago now. I filed a complaint on my own behalf. I got my money back within a week. Last week I actually filed another complaint with my own agency. I think it's really important to, you know, for the boss to know how how things actually work. And so far I've been really impressed. On the worker protection side, it's the same. When workers file complaints, whether it's a freelance worker who hasn't gotten paid, A delivery worker who thinks they faced unfair retaliation. we will investigate those complaints. we have a queue of cases to do so. that said, I think it's also important to not only focus on what comes in the door, we also have to be strategic. What are the big swings we're gonna take? And for that, I'm always driven by all right, let's look at all the complaints we're seeing from consumers or workers. What are the patterns? Where are we seeing consistent patterns of abuse such that we need to take a big swing. You know, an example from earlier this year is we were getting a lot of complaints about self-storage warehouses. This is another one where I have some personal experience, but that's not why we did it, but it happen so happens that I do have some personal experience where they'll lure you in with the teaser rate and then double your price after six months or a year. So what did we do? We sued one of the largest self-storage providers in the country, Extra Space Storage. we later announced $1.7 million back for the city of New York after just a couple months of litigation. and we announced new rules to protect consumers at self-storage warehouses. And again, we did that not because of my personal experience. We did that because we were getting a pattern of complaints. And I felt really strongly rather than just, you know, finding some small self-storage warehouse, making an example of them, let's let's bring a case against a large company to show that nobody's above the law and to show that we're not going to be afraid to take big swings to protect the people of the city. So I I think it's really about identifying the problem based on what what's coming in the door, but then being strategic about how are you gonna bring the case with the most impact. How are you gonna write the rule with the most impact? Maybe you can't write a rule. Then how are you gonna write a new bill with the most impact? So figuring out what the right tool is and then using that tool to to have the most impact.
Khurram: so on the for for for identifying that the after take on your reference. So if somebody, you know, maybe another administration might take on a smaller target to make an example out of them, is that because they assess there'll be like far fewer litigation resources involved, they're just way more likely to settle? was there some risk in taking on a big operator? Can you talk me through that calculus?
Sam Levine: Yeah, I thought a lot about this, especially when I was at the FTC, where I sometimes felt early on during my time at the FTC, there was a certain assembly line culture. and I I don't say this disparagingly, but there was a big you know, I forgot what this rule is, I'm sure you'd be able to tell me, but companies respond to organizations respond to incentives. And when you when you I forget what the term for this is. When you measure something, companies are going to organize themselves around hitting those measurements. and one of the things the FTC measured very consistently over the years is how many cases they brought in a year. And if you're optimizing for how many cases you bring in a year, of course that is going to lead you to bring smaller cases. a two-person operation. when if they get a subpoena from the federal government, they're gonna fold in all likelihood. you send a subpoena to Amazon, it plays out very differently. you know, when we sued Amazon over trapping people in Amazon subscriptions, we probably could have brought five or six cases with the resources we did to do that. to to to bring that single case against Amazon. And if you measure your success just by how many cases you're bringing, that's not a very good strategy. But I was measuring success by what the Oshaw impact we had. And what that case eventually did was return two and a half billion with a B dollars. It was the largest subscription trap settlement in US history. that's a far bigger impact than six cases against corner stores. six cases against mom and pop shops. So I really believe in choosing cases based on the impact you're gonna have rather than how quickly you can put them in in the beginning of the assembly line and split them out the other end. And I think that's the same culture I'm bringing to DCWP. We might have been able to bring two or three cases against a one, you know, a a one person operation in Queens. but that, you know, what message would that have sent? to the thousands of people who have been ripped off by larger providers. What message would that have sent to larger providers who might think that they don't have to worry about enforcement? Enforcement's only a problem for the little guys. I really think enforcement should be based on where the most harm is happening and how you can stop it. And that's that's was my strategy at the FTC. And that's very much something I'm carrying forward in this role.
Khurram: I I I think the law you're referencing earlier was Goodhardt's law, where you know once the metric becomes the toilet, then it seems this to be a good.
Sam Levine: exactly, yes. Yes, exactly.
Khurram: so okay, so on the Amazon front, of course, I understand the value of going after a a large actor. that that there's a lot of scale involved there. That's you know, billion with a B, that's a very focused effort you can you can have. but also in places there's other there's other government agencies that can sue Amazon. And so a a question I have is, you know, for for an agency like yours, to what extent should you be going after some business in Queens or whatever that otherwise is like too small to reach the threshold of what, you know, say the DA's office or or you know the Southern District of New York might prosecute. How how do you think about To what extent do you is there some empirical answer to this? I don't know about what is setting example? Because when you sue Amazon, this is just a guess, I don't know, for some poor behavior, let's say that or or or or some I don't need to characterize whether it's poor or not, just some some some departure from the law. but so let's say some smaller business is so Amazon's got, let's say, storage lockers. Well, some other businesses have storage lockers too. I don't know the answer to this, and maybe there's an empirical answer to this, but to what extent is suing Amazon a deterrent, you know, you know, to smaller operators who say, Well, that's nothing like us. I mean, who cares? And we're probably gonna probably get a fly under the radar. is there an answer to this that that you've explored or or how do you think about this?
Sam Levine: I do think about it. I think about it a lot. I think it depends a lot on the industry. You know, one of the jobs of our department is consumer protection around car towing, right? Getting your car towed. I have not owned a car in almost 20 years, so it's not been an issue for me, but it's an issue for a lot of New Yorkers. And when we go after a tow company, it's not gonna be, you know, some publicly traded company everyone's heard of. It's gonna be some small shop, some much smaller operation. And that's just what you need to do to make sure there's compliance in the industry. Same with employment agencies where we see a lot of fraud, a lot of overcharging people. We just have to go where we see the violations. But I think where I think it's really important to take a different approach is when you're not dealing with just outright fraud, when you're dealing with business practices that companies might believe are legitimate, but that are actually causing significant harm to people. I think to make it clear that those business practices are not acceptable, and that was sort of the original goal of the Federal Trade Commission, you have to be willing to take on. bigger players. I you know, going back to Amazon, for many years it was the norm in this country, in our economy, especially the last decade, decade and a half, that subscriptions were going to be really hard to cancel. it's you know, it's it's become a joke. It was an episode of Friends in the nineties. It was an episode of John Oliver just last week. we're talking in August 2026, just last week, about the difficulty of canceling subscriptions. But one of the things that John Oliver captured really well on a segment last week is the huge aggressive actions that the FTC took during my time there under Chair Khan's leadership to take on these big companies. And I can tell you that has had an effect. if you You know, more than a dozen states have passed laws now to ban these kind of subscription traps that for years companies thought were legal. Some of the biggest companies of the world, like Adobe and Amazon and Vonage, have dramatically changed their practices. Uber has been sued by the Trump administration. It's become bipartisan for trapping people with subscriptions. So in this industry where you had big players engaging in practices they thought was legal, but actually was cheating consumers, I think it took bringing some big cases to really change cultures, but that's ultimately what the FTC did. And we did it in a way that was so smart that we not only had major victories in court, I mean we won partial summary judgment against Amazon, but we got bipartisan buy-in for this work with the Trump administration making it a priority, with r right wing states, red states like Louisiana making it a priority. So I really think it depends on the industry. if you're just dealing with everyday fraud, maybe it makes sense to go after smaller players doing committing that fraud. But if you're going to going after wide widespread business practices that much of corporate America thinks is legitimate, you can't just you can't just beat up on the small players. You need to make clear to the instant the to the biggest players that what they're doing is unacceptable. And I do think that trickles down.
Khurram: Can we go back to the consumer complaints you made? You made cool complaints,
Sam Levine: Sure.
Khurram: what were they?
Sam Levine: So the one the first one I brought was about a CVS coupon that I received and that expired the same day. It was a ten dollar coupon and I did not think it was fair that a coupon should expire the same day you get it in your email. And CVS agreed to give me basically the credit on my C V S card, whatever it was, after D C W P intervened. I currently have a complaint pending against my self storage company, for doubling my prices after after one year with them. So that that complaint is still being mediated and we'll see what happens. But again, I I, you know I I don't call my general counsel and say, fix this problem for me. I that would not be appropriate. I would not do that. I f I filed the complaint as any New Yorker would. And I expected to be treated as any New Yorker. But it was funny actually when when I filed the complaint w about CVS, I got a call on my personal phone, because that's the number I used from one of our mediators. And he he he did know who I was and he said, I usually start these calls by explaining what DCWP is. Would you like me to do that? Or or should we skip that and get to the side? I said, you we can s we can skip that. I have a pretty good idea of what DCWP is. But other than that, you know, I was a ordinary New Yorker. and that was very intentional and I was pleased with the result.
Khurram: say with the coupon thing. If I got that, I'd be annoyed, like, this is dumb. And maybe, maybe they didn't think this through, or maybe they did, and and just they're just trying to get me in the store that day, but I don't really care. What like when you when you as a consumer, we all have complaints, but I can easily imagine a lay person having a reaction like this. When you have a reaction like this. Are you thinking about what's the legal theory of the basis of my complaint? Or I'm gonna work back to figure out what the legal theory is. Because sitting here now, I just consider it to be an annoyance that I wouldn't investigate further, probably. I I guess you'd have to have some sort of theory of inducement. I was induced to go to CVS on the basis of the kind of coupon I might get. but then I think there might be some challenges there because you don't necessarily always know what I mean, like when you get a flu shot, they'll my wife just got her flu shot last week at CVS and said, Hey, we'll give you a yes.
Sam Levine: Yeah. my god, it's the season already. I had forgotten that. That's right. That's right.
Khurram: Just barely, just started. but but yeah, so then they say, Okay, we'll give you five dollar off of twenty coupon and they did. so sure, I mean that could be an inducement where like, hey, like you very clearly expected this specific outcome for this behavior. but t what what tell me about your your intuitions there.
Sam Levine: Well, in this particular case, I had I did have a legal theory, which was that I was a I'm a C V S plus member, whatever the rewards program is, and you're supposed to get a coupon every month for the month, and I was getting the coupon for a one day. So it was simply not in my view, which apparently they credited, not honoring their contractual commitment. But I would make a broader point, which I think many Americans, New Yorkers, maybe don't fully appreciate, which is that one of the amazing themes about consumer protection, you know, I talked about earlier with subscription traps. Companies thought it was legal. Even though deceptive practices are prohibited, companies just thought it was legal because they said there wasn't some law specifically telling them that they couldn't make people Jump through a bunch of hoops to cancel. And the FTC sort of had to build the case that this was an unfair and deceptive practice. but that's exactly how consumer protection law was designed. Congress was very explicit and wise in writing the FTC Act to be capacious, to be to be able to adapt to emerging business practices, to not have to write a new specific law prohibiting every conceivable fraud on the planet. So one of the things I always tell people, and I practice this in my own life, is I I think there's a view people have that, if you sign something or if it's in writing, it's legal, and just s a general sense of helplessness. But if you feel like you're being treated unfairly, if you feel like you're being ripped off, You don't have to find a law that specifically prohibits it. Like tell the government about it. Tell DCWP, tell tell your state AG. These days I'm not sure I would tell, you know, I'm not sure how useful it is to tell the federal government anymore, but certainly tell your local government, tell your state government. And we can look at it. Maybe it is explicitly prohibited by law. Maybe it's not, but we're seeing a pattern of a lot of people facing similar ripoffs and maybe it should be prohibited by law. The whole idea of consumer protection is that it is supposed to evolve to respond to emerging practices. Enforcers only have visibility into those practices if we hear from people. So I always say and I say this at every event you go to, file a complaint with us. You don't need to look up the law. You don't need to know what the law is. You don't need to write a legal brief. Tell us what happened to you. Let us do the work of figuring out whether it might violate some law or whether it might justify some legislative intervention. because this just, you know, shouldn't be happening to New Yorkers. It's an unfair practice.
Khurram: To then in under your approach or approaches you've seen in the city previously, is there anything innovative in legal strategies you're adopting? Can you talk about enforcement strategies, about how you're working up cases, you know, techniques you're using, novel theories? Talk me through through through those those components.
Sam Levine: Yeah, I think one of the most one of the biggest moves we are making, and this is really driven by Mayor Mamdani, and I'm very excited to be a part of it, is building direct feedback loops with New Yorkers. earlier this year, you can't see it, but I have a poster in my office. We had a rental rip off hearing in every borough. And our agency, which traditionally has done virtually no rental work. Except in I mean with with some exceptions I should say. but we really played a key role in you, we participated in every I personally went to four of the hearings. My staff were at all of the hear all five of the hearings. and what we would do, I I sat down in you know, in a gymnasium or in a classroom he having I forgot how long the appointments were. I think four minutes each or something, with each tenant hearing what they were going through in their in their buildings. And from those conversations, and we collectively had dozens of conversations, then they were all compiled. We are now, we've opened investigations. we are in the early stages of planning what rules we might want to write. we now have legislation we're working on writing. So, you know, talk going back to what you said at the beginning, a bottom up strategy. We are really trying to hear directly from people to shape our response. Similarly on subscription traps. we are working with the Office of Technology and Innovation at City Hall to create a seamless process for consumers to very easily direct report violations to us. And again, I'm hoping given the culture change I talked about that we won't see as much violation, but we're trying to make that very direct. So I really am trying to leverage one of the core strengths of this agency, which is as you put it well, I think it's proximity to. you know, actual people, actual New Yorkers. I'm trying to leverage that strength to make us even more responsive to the needs of of New Yorkers, whether they're tenants, whether they're consumers, whether they're workers.
Khurram: I going back again to finite administrative resources allocating allocating resources, how do you think about I think there's a number of interesting trade offs or tension points across these groups. And so let's say for consumers, I I can picture a world where there's some something that's affecting 10,000 well-off families in the Upper East Side, or there's something affecting a hundred thousand less well-off families in Queens. Tell me about that. So let's say the ultimate say dollar impact is about the same. Like, how do you think about allocating resources across groups that have maybe materially different circumstances and resources?
Sam Levine: No, I wanna help the most vulnerable people 'cause I think that's where we can do the most good. if a millionaire gets their ten dollars back That's sort of a a moral victory for them. Perhaps, you know, if someone's struggling to get ten dollars back, that means they can fill their cart. I think well with grocery prices what they are these days. I'm not sure how much how much you can do with ten dollars, but it's a lot more meaningful to them. and I think you s if you look at our work, there's a big focus on Who are the most vulnerable workers, who are the most vulnerable consumers. So take a few examples. There's been a big focus historically at this agency, and certainly under my leadership, on immigrants. making clear that immigrants who face exploitation, retaliation. We've had I've had folks tell me and organizations tell me that immigrants will want to report violations or to us, but their bosses will threaten to take them to ice. Or immigrants who are desperate for help because of fear of ICE are turning to, you know, no so-called notarios who actually are just taking their money and doing no work. We're we're in trial with one of these bad actors right now. these are really vulnerable folks. You know, another big area that we focus on does not get a lot of attention, but it's so important to low income New Yorkers, debt collection. where we finalized this year the strongest debt collection rules in the country, especially around medical debt. Also service of process. This sounds really wonky, but it's a huge issue for low income people, where debt collectors or what have you will sue somebody and the people won't get served with the complaint and they'll get a default judgment and they'll have their wages garnished. So these everyday things don't make a lot of headlines, they don't make a lot they don't get a lot of buzz. You you know, you're not t talking about them on many podcasts. but they're really important to the everyday lives of New Yorkers, so we prioritize them. So I do think it's important to prioritize the most vulnerable consumers. I'll just add, I also think it's important to not fall into a trap. Where consumers are being pitted against workers and workers against small business owners. Something I've seen throughout my career, I especially see it here in New York, is companies really trying to split people. We saw this earlier in the example I mentioned with tipping and delivery apps. The delivery apps thought that they would pit consumers against workers by saying, All right, if you raise the minimum pay, we're gonna move we're gonna, you know, this is a tax on tips, we're gonna make tipping harder for consumers to do. Consumers are sick of tipping. What we've actually found through empirical research this year is once the app companies got out of the way, once they just allowed people to tip, people tipped. Because people actually, New Yorkers actually know how hard it is to be a delivery worker in the city. They know that during the blizzards in February, delivery workers are some of the only folks out there on our streets getting warm food into people's homes. They know that during the heat waves this summer, delivery workers are some of the only folks out there. They want to support the delivery workers and map companies just needed to get out of the way. So we certainly are focusing on the most vulnerable people, but I'm also constantly on guard against bad faith corporate efforts. to divide workers from consumers. I really think there's a broader challenge here to make the economy fair for working people and that really is our North Star at this agency.
Khurram: I I hear everything you're saying in in let's say there's three buckets. There's consumers, there's capital owners, and there's workers.
Sam Levine: Mm-hmm.
Khurram: and I I I totally hear what you're saying that you know there's the capital owners are a third component that is a variable here, but isn't going to be the case that sometimes there is something zero sum about doing things for consumers or or workers? Because that that's that was actually one of the points I wanted to explore with you. Again, with administrative priorities being with the R. I'm just permanently fascinated with with how to allocate resources and and tension points where there's sometimes there's trade-offs. And so isn't the case, at least sometimes there are these inherent trade-offs between things that benefit consumers or things that benefit workers.
Sam Levine: I do think there are trade offs. they're not always. I think sometimes, you know, in the delivery market, for example, food delivery, you know, people predicted when we passed the minimum pay rate that the market would collapse. The opposite's happened. New Yorkers are ordering more food delivered, I believe, than ever in history. The market has only grown. Wages have risen significantly. you know, I I think you could point to examples of price i i if you want to book a hotel in New York, you're gonna pay a lot more, probably, than you would pay in Philadelphia or maybe in Boston or Milwaukee. but our hotel workers are some of the best paid in the country. And I think it's okay, it's more than okay. It's right for n for New York City to just make a judgment call that when we're talking about economic fairness, that if you're a housekeeper in New York City, you should be able to afford a new to live in New York City. If you're a teacher, you should be able to afford to live here. If you're a delivery worker, you should be able to afford to live here and feed your own family. So you're right. Some some questions do involve trade offs. And to me the c All all policy involves trade-offs. The question is who's gonna be at the table? Whose interests are actually gonna be prioritized. I think what you see with this administration is a real commitment to prioritizing the needs of working people. You know, if you are a shareholder and the I I I work right by Wall Street. is where our office is. If if you have money in the market, if you work on Wall Street, if you're a Wall Street bank, you've had an exceptionally good year. You know the biggest bonuses ever at the end of 2025. You've had an exceptionally good couple decades really if you look at the returns in the market. if you're someone who doesn't have investments and you're relying on your wages, you've not done very well. and those wages have been flat for a long time, even as the cost of education, insurance, housing has soared. So yes, there are trade offs. And again, the question is whose interests are we really going to center? And I think the mayor's been clear that we're centering the interests of working people, and I think that's reflected in how our agency is doing our work as well.
Khurram: And that's something else that I'm interested in is in terms of enforcement. So y there's this bottom-up component of you are getting feedback from people directly about issues you're running into. And then you're identifying patterns that make okay, here's we identified a pattern of this kind of issue. Next question is what do we think is the most impactful way to act on this issue? So this is a way to really boost the ROI of of all the kinds of issues you can take on. And so what I'm curious about, you know, you referenced tow trucks earlier and said you yourself haven't had a car in a long period time. my family takes a lot of public transit. We do have a car, but we use it, you know, really for things that you can't use public transit for. and so you know, I I'm I'm in favor of of people owning fewer cars personally. we rent and I you know, of course it's really common for people, particularly with kids, to to own. And so, but I think renting is really underrated. For people generally and then also families. And so I'm curious about to what extent, let's say on the on the on the tow truck thing, it could it could be the case that the city says, hey, all things considered, we want a city with fewer cars, right? So I I'm not ex expert on the congestion pricing issues, but you know, I think just my understanding is all things considered the city wants fewer cars in in the city. or or maybe the city expects, hey, we we want to promote autonomous vehicles. We think that's gonna be incredibly beneficial to the city in the next 10 years or whatever. What are the other policy objectives that that that influence your enforcement strategy, if any, and then what's the time scale that some of these are operating on?
Sam Levine: I mean again I I think it really is going to depend on the sector. If you look in the i i i and and it's gonna depend on sort of the what part of our mission. If you look at what we want for workers, for example, we want delivery workers to be able to have a wage they can actually afford to live in the city. We don't want them to be deactivated without cause. We want some of the most vulnerable workers to have stronger rights in New York City. we want all workers to be able to take time off. We want retail workers to be able to have predictable schedules. And I'm very interested in spreading that model we haven't talked about. But another thing key thing we do is fair work. We getting more predictable schedules for people so that workers can make time for their families, make time for their jobs, make time sometimes it means for second jobs. So I I think it really is going to depend, but fundamentally it's about making sure people, whether it's as consumers or workers, can enjoy dignity in New York City, can afford to put food on the table, can afford their rent. And the mayor's been very clear, Deputy Mayor Julie Sue, who was the Labor Secretary under President Biden, has made very clear that affordability really is not just about prices. It's also about making sure people can afford what they need for everyday life, especially shelter, medical care, food. So it is gonna depend, you know, again, sector by sector and how we're approaching it. But that but that is the overall that's the overall ambition for us.
Khurram: I want to also explore a little more by switching gears to talk about your role with lawmaking. rulemaking, lawmaking. I I'm not really familiar with rulemaking at a city level. but can you talk some more about yeah that dimension of your practice and and and maybe a comparison point to what you did at the FTC? because I think this the skills in Building coalitions and multiple stakeholders. You and I are discuss discussing, you know, before we we we we we hit record today. being able to negotiate multiple stakeholders, I think, is inherent in servicing clients. I think particularly large clients. So even if you're a lawyer, large law firm that has a large client, there's any number of instances where there's multiple stakeholders that need to be addressed, and and these might have concerns beyond legal, they may have. business considerations, which maybe is analogy analogy to other political or policy objectives. So can you talk us more about comparison of FTC in and and the role that you had there in in in in working with lawmakers or rule makers and in how you're approaching that today in your in your practice at the in C at the city.
Sam Levine: Sure. Well when I was at the FTC, one of the things we did, and that's very similar to what we do here, is we provided it was called technical assistance for bills. con you know, members of Congress would draft bills and before they were typically before they were introduced, they would share it with us and we would provide technical assistance on them. And That would always and it was a very high volume business. We got a lot of bills. And all of our technical assistants would have to, among other people, would have to run through me for approval. And I'll be honest with you, I did not spend a lot of time at all reviewing the feedback we provided on bills. I remember saying to someone, you know, let me know if this has any chance in hell of becoming a law. And then I'll pay a lot more attention to it. I really just felt given the dysfunction in Congress that spending my time, my personal time it's something the agency had to do, but for my time, you know, reviewing technical assistance on a law doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of passing was not a good use of of my time. and, you know, I think it was a you know something the agency had to do and I'm I guess I'm glad we did it. But it was just not something I thought a lot about. And in my years at the FTC, certainly as director in consumer protection, I can think of I could probably count on one hand the number of meaningful bills that passed that actually gave us additional authority or responsibility. Come fast forward to New York City, completely different story. We have a council here, that passes a lot of bills. That passes a lot of bills in our chapter, in our area, worker protection bills, consumer protection bills. I've been at multiple celebrations this year of bills passing, whether it's minimum wage for security guards or deactivation protections for delivery workers, that I stood alongside the sponsors and and the stakeholders to celebrate. But that also means we're gonna see a lot of bills that maybe don't make a lot of sense. Maybe that are well intentioned but are maybe don't make sense for us. And I think this is where it really You have to be a you have to be a counselor in the same way that someone has to counsel their client and maybe say to their client, Your goal for this litigation makes sense, but I don't think the strategy you want to pursue is the is the right way to go. Or maybe your goal just doesn't make sense at all. I've had to convert had conversations at times with legislators and just say, you know, I want you I want to manage expectations on this bill. I w you know, I want you to understand that there's significant preemption risk with this bill. At the end of the day, they'll make their own decision. but I find when this is done well, it can be very productive. I had a meeting last week with a a member of the council where they had introduced a very well-intentioned bill. I thought the drafting of it had a lot of problems and was not gonna do what they hoped it would do. So their staff were set to meet with my staff. I called the member the day before and I said, Look, I don't want you to be blindsided in a meeting tomorrow. We have a lot of concerns with how this bill is drafted. We also have some good ideas for you of how it could be fixed. And we're happy to share them. And and they said, Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I'm not wedded to any language. I just want to do X good thing for X community. And we'd have very productive meeting. so I think, you know, in the same way that a lawyer learns how to counsel their client in a way that doesn't, you know, that sort of moves them along. I think it's the same thing I I try to do with lawmakers is say, I get you have this goal and I want to work with you on it. Let's work together to get there, even if it doesn't look exactly like how you're envisioning it from the beginning. I I have seen other I I have seen in government where the lawyers, the agencies would go to the lawmakers or go to their staff and just say, This is Stupid, don't do it. Nobody wants to hear that. In the same way that if you tell your client this stupid, don't do it, they're just gonna find a new lawyer. If you tell lawmakers this is stupid, don't do it, they're just gonna pass the law and they're not gonna take your feedback. I think you have to demonstrate in a sincere way that you share the lawmakers' goals and that you wanna work with them to make sure you're getting there in the most optimal way possible. And that is a skill. and I think it's one that it's a skill that lawyers bring use in private practice. It's one that I try to bring to my work with lawmakers here.
Khurram: What have you developed the most in that skill? Like what what what is if there's one technique that you've cultivated the most that you feel you've made the most progress on applying to success? Like what what is that skill?
Sam Levine: I think it's building one-on-one relationships with lawmakers. I think it's being able to call someone and say, like, be very frank. Like, this is what I'm gonna say in the meeting tomorrow. This is what my staff is gonna say. but here's the deal. Here's where we like I I think appre I think people appreciate candor. I think sometimes there's an attitude at agencies to just say Let the agency staff tell the lawmaker staff what's up, you know, their view on the law. And the way that filters up to the principles sometimes is the agency doesn't want to do this, the agency doesn't want to move forward, the agency is a problem. And I've heard from plenty of council members about problematic agencies that just stonewall them. I never want a stonewall. And what that often means is saying, call in the council member and saying, Look, there's this institutional reason, this is a problem. Here's what the staff's gonna say, here's what I'm gonna say. I'm gonna open this line directly with you. I want you to hear from me directly that I support what you are trying to do. I wanna get us there. Our staff's are gonna have to do some work on the details, but if there's an issue, come to me directly. And I'd like to be able to do the same with you. And I think building that kind of personal relationship is you you could give lawmakers and I I don't mean New York City, I mean at any level, the best arguments in the world for why the law is dumb or unconstitutional or you know, unworkable. And they're not gonna care if they if they just feel you're being oppositional for the sake of being oppositional. If they s if they feel you're just trying to stonewall them. I I think to actually so I think it's actually important to signal you share the goal and you wanna work with them to get them to a good place.
Khurram: The one on one thing sounds incredibly time consuming. and you do got you gotta switch gears. It could be very gratifying, you know, relationships can be very gratifying to build. is there anything that you found effective at scale? I'm thinking of something like, you know, the way that a lawyer might go to an in-house team and give CLE and and say, you know, here's here's things you should be thinking about for the coming year. You know, maybe in the same way you can say, Hey, you know, here's here's you know, here's a primer on preemption. So you understand, like
Sam Levine: Yeah.
Khurram: just it's not obvious how this concept works. Yeah are are there things that you found that facted at scale?
Sam Levine: I have found that personal relationships in government, whether it's with those other city agencies or lawmakers, and this was true in the federal government just as much, are a huge investment of time and are worth every minute. you know, I remember When the s I don't really work from home anymore 'cause my New York City apartment is too small. But when I used to sometimes work from home in DC, my partner would say, You're not working, you're just on the phone all day And I would say to him, That's a lot of my work. you know, i i if you think about where I can add the most value to the work DCWP does, it's not Going line by line on a bill and figuring out how to fix it. I mean I will I will look at our reviews of the bill, but I I you know, I remember there was a I was talking to a stakeholder last week and I said, Look, I want you and I to agree on X and I'm not gonna worry about the details, you can figure out the details with our staff, but th but this is where you and I this is where I would like to get a line with with between you and I. And you know, the rest we can leave to other folks. And I think that's really important. For me, it's sort of and and this is a departure from in some ways how I was trained as a lawyer, or at least how you sort of get through law school successfully. I don't I will not get into the weeds of technical assistance on Bill. And some I mean sometimes I will, under the right occasion. Certainly if it requires a judgment call or policy question, I will. But generally I won't. I'll delegate that a lot. And I will use that time instead to build relationships with people. I think when you have a principal, certainly at a pretty large organization like DCWP, now we have about 400 people here, it is not a great use of the principal's time to be trying to do all the work that you have a 400 person staff to do. I think a lot of the time a better use of the principal's time is to build those relationships with other parts of the government. to make sure that the work coming out of the agency is actually well received, to make sure that the relationships are in place so that we can collaborate with other stakeholders rather than being at odds with other stakeholders. And that really does require engagement principle to principle. And that's why even though it is a very large investment of time, and I routinely, for many years now, I have always included on my calendar hour or two hour blocks that are just call time. For me to catch up on one on one calls with people. I think that's incredibly important and it is takes a lot of time, but it's it's worth it.
Khurram: What you're describing is is let's say let's make an analogy of a law firm. This is like say a partner saying, Hey, like it's not it's not useful for me to get master of the subject matter of this dispute. What's useful to me is building a relationship with a client so that we have
Sam Levine: Yeah.
Khurram: Can manage around ultimate objectives here. And then my team can sort out the the substantive components of this. But I wonder for you, I mean, how much of you know going back to when you were at Harvard Law and then and then taking on this this issue around foreclosure and you know taking it to the Supreme Court, that that required legal skills. That was just
Sam Levine: Yeah.
Khurram: you know, legal acumen, yes, it was augmented by you know, the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau's approach and philosophy around being grounded in the details of actual individuals and and consumers affected by by by certain laws. but in order to achieve those objectives, it was like legal skills that you needed to accomplish those goals. I'm not hearing that as much now in a role. I'm hearing that it's much more relational, coalitional, you know, much bigger picture and way less legal. So I wonder if I got that right. And then i or if there are some what do you feel like is the the legal training you're using on a daily basis?
Sam Levine: I'm certainly still using a lot of legal training. I mean I we we don't file a complaint unless I've reviewed it. I d I'm I mark up complaints, I mark up consent orders, I review, you know, guidance for putting out. I I am enough of a I'm enough of a lawyer and enough of a com enough of a nerd, I guess, that I I want to I I I I certainly anything we're filing in court, any pleadings we're filing in court, I want to look at in advance. And I will have substantive views and substantive questions and theories we're using or not using and and and my team knows that. But I also am mindful that I but it but it is not to the same degree that you know, I'm mindful of what my own role is. It is not to the same degree as if I were the staff attorney. So I will look at a complaint and I will broadly say, I'm just using this as a hypothetical Have we considered an unconscionability theory here instead of solely a deception theory? You know, have we considered looking at how this company is deceiving people? ha have we looked at where this company is deceiving people with design patterns in addition to deceptive representation? So I will engage, but it's with bigger picture questions. It's not where I am going line to line. I used to work with a someone at the FTC who, you know, was was an advisor to a commissioner and when he'd review the pleadings that the agency was gonna file, you know, he would he would make sure the cross references were right. You know, see section two A, he'd make sure that was two A. he was very good at it. I I'm not gonna do that. It was that's just there are other people to do that. I'm gonna make sure at a high level this is making the point we want it to make. It's bringing the right theory, it's using the tools in the right way that I wanna do it. So I still engage quite closely with leg certainly and you know, we also get sued and I engage heavily on the legal strategy, including with the law department. But I also recognize that at the level I am here, my job is not to be another cook in the kitchen. It's not to be another staff attorney. It's to have general goals for litigation, make sure those goals are reflected in the cases we're bringing, but also make a lot of time to maintain the political relationships, which are at the end of the day a prerequisite to everything else we do. We can't do the work we do if the council doesn't give us funds to do it, right? so I I see that as really important. One of the things, one of my great moments of pride this year was the mayor announcing the largest investment in DCWP in the agency's history, the largest increase in the agency's history. It's gonna allow us to hire scores more attorneys and investigators. We're already significantly bigger than we were just a couple of weeks ago. were hiring so quickly. That was only possible because of relationship building. that was only possible because I took the time to to make the calls, to to make the case for why investing in us was a good would generate good returns for the city. If I had spent all my time reviewing pleadings, we'd have a lot fewer pleadings to file because we'd have a lot few lawyers to file them.
Khurram: In working with lawmakers, you know, you mentioned a conversation with lawmaker about trying to get on the same page on an issue. Can can you tell me about a time where there was something that a lawmaker wanted to do that was zero sum with the enfor with the enforcement partyment's goals and you had to resolve that? Or there was a time which there was like multiple lawmakers who had competing goals that were zero sum from an enforcement of of consumer worker protection that you had to resolve.
Sam Levine: Yeah, I'm trying to think about. There's there's there's some live ones I don't wanna say too much about. look, there are laws that I've seen proposed that I I I'm not sure if zero sum is the word, but I I flatly think they're they're bad. They they will not help us do our work well and in fact they will make things harder. And in the first instance you try to discourage it's like stages of grief or something. The first instance you try to discourage them from advancing it, but if they're really committed, it's gonna advance and it's gonna pass. And I I can tell you one thing I I was actually thinking about this morning is there there's a law that that passed, I'm not wild about it. And I'm thinking, you know, how to make lemonade of this? What what could we do? What could we do with this to actually produce something beneficial? And also what can we do with this to sort of manage expectations given what I what I think some of the problems. So I I know I'm being a little vague here because a lot of these are live issues, but you know, I sometimes you have to recognize when you you you just you're gonna lose, right? Like there are times when laws take on a momentum of their own and they're gonna pass. And at some point you have to shift to a mode of, hey, if you can't kill it, you try to fix it. And if you can't fix it, you gotta live with it. And then and then it becomes a conversation of, all right, how are we gonna staff this? How are we going to try to tr you know, maybe we can try to use regulatory enforcement or guidance to try to steer this in a more helpful direction. You just have you just have to shift into a mode of accommodation. and again, I think that's that that's a b a a bigger skill that I I try to deal that I've tried to learn in years in government. I'm sure it's just as true in the private sector is you it's sometimes you just have to recognize when you're not gonna get what you want and then you have to make the best of it. and that's that's something I I have learned to do. I I don't enjoy losing battles, but when you lose battles you can't just wipe your hands up it and say, I'm gonna let this play out and be a disaster to make a point. You have to make the best of it.
Khurram: I my switching gears significantly. So my parents when they first moved to the US, one of the first places they moved to was in Brighton Beach, you know, which is about as far south as you can go in Brooklyn. And so I spent some time visiting there when I grew up in New Jersey and then spent a lot of time in Queens. There's a lot of South Asians in Queens. So those those are two boroughs that I spent time in, but of course I spent a lot of time in Manhattan and a lesser extent Brooklyn. And you've underscored So so I think for a lot of professionals you see the ways that Manhattan and Brooklyn impact, or maybe even for some people, frankly, define New York. but of course there's other boroughs. And so I wonder if you can educate me or others about a way in which right now something is happening in one of these other boroughs that is going to impact the whole city. you know, from from the vantage point of of of your agencies enforcement. tell me about you know what's underrated about one of these other boroughs and in the way that they're they're impacting life in your
Sam Levine: Yeah, sure. So, you know, one of the things that I was naive about, I shouldn't admit this on the record coming into New York, this is gonna sound like people are gonna laugh at me, like how many car dealerships we have in in New York City?
Khurram: Yeah, okay.
Sam Levine: I'm I I live in lower Manhattan. You you will you will not find any car dealerships. in my neighborhood nor will you find it by by my office. But if you go out to Queens, especially Eastern Queens, you'll find a lot of car dealers. There hundreds of car dealerships in New York City. And a big part of the work we do at DCWP, and this is very parallel to what I did at the FTC, in fact, we recently brought a case against the same dealership that I sued or that the FTC sued years ago. are problems in a car dealer market. Where again, if you're a Manhattanite, it's probably not on your radar because you probably don't have a car, and you're probably not that worried. It's sort of the same with the towing that we were talking about earlier. But if if you live in Queens, it's a big deal. And we've been really active over the last six months, seven months now in our car and our used car enforcement. We did a sweep of dealers making sure they're advertising upfront prices. We brought cases. we're in a trial now against Mitsubishi dealer in town. I think this kind of work is probably not particularly salient for folks like me in Lower Manhattan. But if you need a car to get to work, or if you need a car 'cause you have kids and and you got you know, child care responsibilities, then getting ripped off on a used car is a really big deal. So even though it's not a a so so we're we're we are making this a big I should say Staten Island too. there's a big deal on Staten Island as well. And we brought cases against Staten Island car dealerships. So we are very mindful of being attentive to the needs in every borough. I have had meetings with organizations we work with in every borough. Yes, absolutely, including Staten Island. We had a random ripoff hearing out in Staten Island. I really do want to be respon I'm I've met with the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce. I really do want to be responsible to the needs of people in every borough because the New York City one experiences in Lower Manhattan is very different than the New York City one experiences in in South Brooklyn. and that's the beautiful thing about our city and then needs to be reflected in our agency priorities.
Khurram: Okay, conversely, what is it about, you know, people have some information, perceptions, experience about Manhattan and Brooklyn? what is it that through your experience through the you know you you've exposed your sit the city for any number of years and now you've got this insider take on these cities and just s probably see it differently, just see the the the the the guts and the core of it differently. What w if if there's one thing that people should know about Manhattan, people should know about Brooklyn that is not at all obvious, counterintuitive, surprising. What what's that?
Sam Levine: I don't know if this is counterintuitive, but self-storage, what I mentioned earlier, is not a luxury here. I don't wanna say it's a utility, but it's a key part of the affordability equation because most New Yorkers, including me, had to d i if if you moved here from somewhere else, you had to downsize. And if you live in Manhattan certainly or many parts of Brooklyn as a as a kind of middle class person, you probably don't have as much space as you really need. And you need additional space to store your stuff. And the way that and and again, you know Ever you know, when I I grew up in Milwaukee, I never thought about storage. storage is something you maybe use for a month when you're between places. For many of my friends in in the city and c and and for myself, storage is an absolute essential and the way people are being nickel and more than nickel and dime, the way people are being gouged, has really gotten to a point where you know, when we announced our case against Esterspace, we got a flood of complaints. Saying, What about this storage company? What about that? Storage company. If you drive along the East River, you know, if you're driving down the FDR, you will see more self-storage facilities than probably any other any other business. They dot the the riverfront, because this is so important. I and I think sort of the lack of space in Manhattan creates real needs for people. You know, you mentioned earlier that your family sometimes rents a car. to or an another family sometimes rent a car to deal with, you know, whatever needs they have. That's another thing I have had to deal with. you know, there are certain things I need to do. I need to rent a car for and I've seen firsthand the way you get ripped off with rental cars. And last week we just announced our first rental car inspection sweep in more than a decade. And I was informed in part by my experience of seeing how rental cars for many new it's not just a thing for tourists, it's for a lot of New Yorkers who don't have cars still sometimes need cars. So being very mindful to what the specific dynamics are in New York City, and for me personally, being humble enough to know that I'm still learning some of these dynamics. Again, I'm not even gonna tell you. I had a joke with my general counselor where I guessed the number of car dealerships in New York City, and I was off by an order. Or possibly many order possibly multiple orders of magnitude I was so off. So really important to understand the full lived experience of people in every neighborhood of the city.
Khurram: I love that. well look, I I think I think the insights you have are very potent for lawyers who are tangibly thinking about making a move into something that we have public advocacy. so
Sam Levine: Mm-hmm.
Khurram: I think we've gotten a lot of clarity around what are tangible ways that you can make an impact locally. For you, I guess, to to wrap up here then, what is it that you're looking forward to in terms of enforcing priorities in the next six months? What do you expect you, you're talking about personally, the things you're learning, you know, the lived experience and the tangibility of of the issues facing York? what is it that you prospectively can guess? Of course you'll be surprised, about what you'll be learning about in the next six months?
Sam Levine: Two things three things rise to the top. One, I wanna get tens of millions of dollars back in people's pockets. I wanna show that a well funded, well resourced agency, we're still on our road there, can deliver high ROI, as as you put it, can deliver tangible returns for New York consumers and workers. I wanna do that over the next six months, and I wanna do that for the rest of my tenure. two, I really wanna build up the new division I mentioned, our research and analytics division. To really to not only ensure that we're sophisticated on emerging tech, which I'll talk about in a minute, but also to make us more productive as an agency. You know, when we, for example, have fair work week violations or protective time off violations, that can be labor-intensive, you know, reviewing pay stubs, reviewing schedules, to the extent we can start to automate that and significantly increase our productivity as an agency. I'll consider that a real win. And it's exactly why we're investing in this new division, is to make our agency. see more productive and not just to settle for the usual slow pace of government. And the third thing I'm really excited about is I really do want to be on the leading edge of you know, as as we deal with this real tech revolution underway in our economy, I am not expecting any leadership from Washington, DC when it comes to what kind of reforms are necessary to protect consumers or workers. Those reforms are gonna have to be bottom up. So I really want to see coming out of this agency, and I think you will, some of the most cutting edge work to protect consumers from emerging threats, whether it's surveillance pricing, but there's now a city ban been proposed that my department is. supporting and working with the council on to algorithmic scheduling where we're working to expand and enforce scheduling protections for workers to minimum pay to make sure that people can actually afford to live in the city. so I you know I don't know if that would have been a role for a city agency a couple years ago, but in an environment where Washington isn't leading, positioning DCWP not only as a leader deeply grounded in the deeply grounded in New York, with deep connections to the people of the city, but also a national leader in developing the policies and the enforcement strategies to meet the moment role. And that's what it really excites me.
Khurram: I have a bonus question. You mentioned bottom
Sam Levine: Yeah.
Khurram: up to remind me of something else, which is how are you engaging the private bar? How is the private bar something you're learning from? These feedback loops you're talking about, relationships you're talking about, what role is that playing in in in your approach?
Sam Levine: I welcome engagement with the private bar. I'm speaking at the National Advertising Division in a couple of weeks. I don't know if any commissioner before me's ever done that. It's traditionally something the FTC consumer chief does. I I used to do it when I was at the FTC. That's speaking to hundreds of defense lawyers about FT about DCWP priorities. A a a law firm partner reached out to me last month about doing a seminar. I said, I'm happy to do a seminar for the bar. My rule is I don't like it to be private. I want it to be open to the public. I don't want any particular law firm to have special advantages. I said, As long as it's public, I welcome meeting with defense lawyers. I spoke the New York City Bar Association, think it was about a wide range of issues including debt collection and many other issues, about our priorities too. I welcome conversations with the private bar. The best the best defense lawyers are lawyers who really counsel their clients to be in compliance. And if I can help them do that, I'm eager eager to do so.
Khurram: well, hopefully this podcast will be part of you promoting your ideas to the public.
Sam Levine: For sure.
Khurram: but Sam, it was great to have you back. I I keep on learning from you. I I above all admire your passion for advocacy, and your relentless disregard for status. And I think that's something that is a major antidote to so much of the practice of law. but of course I I recognize ironically you've achieved a lot of status in and how much you're you're doing in such a high profile role. So that's the other the fascinating thing is is the ironies of if you if you reject status or reject you know money or or these other kinds of things, they can find their way to you because you get really good at something. but yeah, it's so it's so great to see your the evolution of your thought and and and again going back to how we began the episode, the the prescience so I wonder, you know, what we're laying in foundation here that we might pick up in a couple of years.
Sam Levine: Yeah, that's exactly right. And I would I would close on the same advice I guess that I so presciently offered two years ago, which is that Yes, please. If you i if you didn't believe me in twenty twenty four, believe me in twenty twenty six. If you wanna make a positive difference in people's lives, don't chase prestige. Chase the kind of agencies doing everyday work to make people's lives better, e you know, regardless of who controls Congress or the presidency. And those are local agencies. They're local agencies like ours, but New York City by no means has a monopoly on them. I've been in state government, I've been in local government, and there's so many places all over over the country that you can really get your hands dirty actually making p using your legal skills to make people's lives better. And there's nothing more fulfilling than that. and maybe the status will follow, maybe it's maybe it won't. but there's nothing more fulfilling than thinking you've actually made people's lives better.
Khurram: Thanks, Sam.
Sam Levine: Great to be back.
Khurram: so I I have to start with a quote, a quote from your previous episode. And for for for context, you were at the FTC at the time, and you were discussing your path and how you got there, and some experience you acquired before you went to law school while you're at Harvard Law. And you were coming about people pursuing prestigious paths, and of course, from from schools like Harvard Law, of course, any number people do. And You said here there were certain career paths that were sort of associated with being sufficiently prestigious for Harvard graduates. People should look beyond that. People should look at local government, state government, legal aid. and this is why you're at the FTC. And fast forward now you are in New York leading the Department of Consumer Work Protection. And so a a really interesting prescient comment you made about yourself. I wonder if at the time you thought that that you would Could you see yourself doing that? I mean, you clearly contemplate that as a possibility, but how how realistic did that seem as as what you'd want to do next from the FTC and in applying the skills you've acquired so far?
Sam Levine: Well again, it's it's great to be back and looking back on our last conversation together, I'm not sure what exactly was in my head. I will tell you, I will confess, I thought we were gonna have another four years in the federal government. I was already making plans in twenty twenty four for what I wanted to see at the FTC for a a second term, as it were. that did not come to pass, of course, and after the twenty twenty four election I did need to start thinking about all right, what am I gonna do next? and I did think back, I guess, to the same advice I've given to countless law students and I shared on your podcast, which is that there's incredible work happening at the local level, there's incredible work happening at the state level. And that is where I started to turn my eyes. And even before I started at D CWP when I was working as an academic fellow at Berkeley, my focus was on supporting state and local enforcement. So I can't say that in twenty twenty four I was planning to return to local government imminently, but certainly when the American people in some ways made that decision for me, it's where I turned to because I knew the important work that happens there.
Khurram: So when you're at Berkeley, what what's the thesis you development for how to approach state and and local enforcement?
Sam Levine: Well, I really wanted to be very practical. I knew what it's like to be an infor to be an enforcer. I know what it's like to hear from think tanks and interest groups that we should do X or do Y. And I had some sense of what is actually useful. And what I really tried to do in my time in twenty twenty five at Berkeley Was give lawmakers, give enforcers really concrete tools and areas where they could use their authorities to make the economy more fair. So I did a paper, for example, on surveillance pricing with Berkeley and Vanderbilt. My co-author was Stephanie Wim. And we really focused on, we had a whole appendix to the report where, all right, we said all these things. Here are concrete tools states have right now, without additional legislation needed, that they can use to Crackdown and pricing abuses. And we really did spend a lot of time on that report specifically looking at state authorities. I think we had a table in there and what they could do. And then we followed up on the release of that report by meeting with a whole bunch of state regulators. We had a convening at Georgetown, we had follow-up meetings with states. So it was very intentional about trying to shape state enforcement and support state enforcement rather than just putting a paper out into the universe hoping for some good. press and and moving on. We really tried to build a foundation for something longer term.
Khurram: And so it's it's interesting because it it seems to me that you have different lenses on how to accomplish ends you have. So you you you have you have certain goals that you want to promote with your skills as a lawyer around consumer worker welfare. And so you're capable of pursuing it using different techniques to operate at different levels. but I I think one of the most Remarkable approaches has been this very bottom-up approach that you've used. And so I'm also in your in your previous episode, something talked about with the foreclosure work you did. so you you know, while you were at Harvard Law, you you were involved in in foreclosure advocacy, and then eventually ended ended up arguing before the Massachusetts Supreme Court on a key issue regarding regarding this issue. But so along the way, you had a mentor, David Grossman, who would take Harvard Legal Aid Bureau students around on a bus tour to neighborhoods that were being actually impacted by foreclosure. And so you had a sense of the texture of the impact, or you'd see whole blocks are affected by foreclosure. So you could really wrap your head around the tangibility of that. I feel like that too was very prescient for the work you're doing now because. Something in our conversations you've underscored is the two related aspects of your work now, the departure from from the FTC is the velocity, but then the proximity. And so I wonder if you you can talk some more about the you know, building on those previous experiences of the tangibility of your exposure to a legal issue and and how that's playing out now today in in New York for you.
Sam Levine: Well, I'm really glad you brought up David Grossman, my really incredible mentor at at Harvard Law School, who passed away a decade ago. there's now a foundation in his honor to support law graduates going into the public interest law. We just celebrated the ten year anniversary. And yeah, one of his big focuses was on bottom up movement lawyering and what lawyers can do. not to just sort of have fun in court making interesting arguments, but actually use their skills to improve people's lives and and to do so through a model that makes the client the real principle, makes the tenants, the workers, the consumers the real principles, rather than having a lawyer driven strategy. And I really do feel like now being in local government I've come full circle. I think, you know, when I was at the Federal Trade Commission We were a little bit more removed from everyday people, right? We were in Washing you know, I was in this nineteen thirties building in Washington. I was reviewing lawsuits. It was a joyful experience and we did a lot of good for a lot of people. I'm very proud of it. but it was a little bit more separated from the people who were trying to serve. New York City is very different. it's very much on the ground. When we announce big cases, money back to workers, we'll typically announce them in a room full of the workers who are gonna be getting those checks. when we wanted to roll out a new law giving delivery workers access to bathrooms when they pick up food from a restaurant, I was on site at an organizing center handing out the bathroom cards to that the delivery workers could use and answering questions about you know what happened. If they get resistance, what happens if the bathrooms out of order? Very practical everyday things that would never make it into a Supreme Court brief or into an appellate brief, but of the day-to-day ways that people actually experience the law and people actually experience economic injustice. So I really feel in in this job, and I think this is one of the beautiful things about local government, a real connection to yes, let's draft the right law. Let's defend it in court with the right briefs. Let's do all the things of traditional lawyering that are necessary to write and and sustain good laws. But let's also be people. Let's also understand how they're affecting actual people. Let's let's also make sure they're actually working on the ground. And that's been one of the really fulfilling things about this job for me.
Khurram: Do you so when you think about impact that skills, you know, going back to the work you're doing in Berkeley and and working with other enforcers, you know, that's rewarding its own way. Is it that you find this the tangibility of literally being in a room with people that you are impacting? Do you find that more more gratifying? Or like how how how how does this play out for you apart from the skills requiring, i is there a difference in personal gratification between one or the other or is it about the same?
Sam Levine: It's it is gratifying, but it's also humbling. Right? You know, I'll I'll go back again to this bathroom card example. The city passed a law that said delivery app companies in their contracts with the restaurants need to require the restaurants to let delivery workers in to use the bathroom. Very reasonable law. But again, when I was meeting with actual delivery workers, all sorts of questions came up that weren't necessarily contemplated when the law was drafted. You know, what if what if the restaurant does this? What if the restaurant retaliates against you? What if the restaurant says bathroom is out of order but is letting its customers in? Again, these are sort of very much day-to-day questions. These are not the stuff of cert petitions to the Supreme Court. But this is actually what it means to do economic justice work on the ground. This is actually what is required to translate well intentioned laws into improvements in people's lives. So hearing firsthand what impact these laws can have, should have, is is very gratifying. 'Cause you can hear the experiences of folks who had to put up with truly inhumane conditions before these laws were in place. But it's also humbling and seeing that even the best written law doesn't always contemplate every every dimension of an individual's experience. And going being able to go back to the office and say, All right, what are we gonna do about this? What are we gonna do about that? How can we make sure that the goals of these laws actually translate into improvement in people's lives? And I guess that's both humbling and gratifying as an attorney.
Khurram: Can you give an example of something you let's say in this bottom-up approach, you know, something you learned, you know, from from the mechanical application of some law and like all the you know reasonable but you know maybe not obvious applications of it or or or or or potential obstacles to application. there's something you learn in that process that fed back into something upstream about a strategy for. working with lawmakers to pass laws that achieve goals that the city wants to achieve or enforcement strategy. Is there some something that went from bottom to up that you can a specific example?
Sam Levine: Yeah, I mean absolutely one of the things that New York City has been a national leader on is protected time off. It used to be called earned safe safe and sick leave, where if you're an employee in New York City, you're entitled to forty to fifty six hours of paid time off and then a d additional unpaid time off again for for for different reasons. but what we heard over and over again, what I have heard personally over and over again from employees is that These rights exist on the books. These rights even exist in their HR manuals. But day to day, when people take time off, they get batteries of questions when they try to take time off, they get cross-examined, they feel like they can face retaliation, they can face even the loss of their job for demanding to take time off. So one of the things we did this year is we put out a report on protected time off benchmarks. where we analyzed data on how much, for example, sick time workers take off in a typical industry. And there's there's a lot of data out on this. And we said If you're looking at an individual company in in must in in a given industry and the employees are taking far less time off than is the norm for that industry based on this data that we're putting in this report, that is a strong indicator that the policies on paper are not translating into actual improvement in worker well being. That's kind of the smoke that should leave in for lead enforcers to follow up and investigate. That is the strategy we've taken up to enforce the law in this area, but it's also a strategy that we are actively sort of you know proselytizing, encouraging other enforcers and employers who want to do right by their employees to study because it it's it's a very clear example that we learn from our conversations with workers of where the goals of a law aren't always reflected in the day-to-day experiences of people on the ground.
Khurram: Can you give some other examples of data-driven approaches your HC is taking? because that I guess that that too is maybe you can say that's call it bottom up, where you're just, you know, making sense data. What what you know what what's the norm? What should we expect here? it sounds like that's one way to use data. How how else is your HC using data to determine enforcement priorities or gaps?
Sam Levine: Well, I think one of the most exciting ways we're doing that is through our minimum pay rate enforcement. So in New York City, delivery workers are entitled to a minimum pay that our department sets. That minimum pay is and and it it's more complicated than it sounds. That's time that they're delivering that also accounts for on call time. The time they're, you know, might be sitting around waiting for an order. We get data constantly from the app companies on how much they're paying their workers. and we analyze whether they're paying them enough. And this is a very proactive enforcement strategy. This is an area where workers don't always know if they're being underpaid, because it's often opaque. It's often workers always all don't always know exactly how many hours they worked or exactly the formula by which they're according to be paid. And that opacity is something I think that in other jurisdictions companies take advantage of. And the great thing about the way we've set up our enforcement regime in New York City is that the heavy lift is on us. We have a whole team, we launched a new division this year, research and analytics division, specifically focused on ingesting this data on how much workers are getting paid, how many hours they are working, and making sure the companies are paying them enough. And if you look at our minimum pay rate enforcement. Sometimes it comes from worker complaints. Sometimes it comes from companies actually realizing on their own that they underpaid people. And we really appreciate when companies do that. That's the right thing to do. But a lot of the time, most of the time, it comes from proactive monitoring by our staff to make sure that workers are getting paid. They deserve it. And by the way, I really think that's a model for governance, a model where the burden isn't on working people. the burden is frankly on the government to make sure that people are getting paid what they're entitled to. So we're working to ramp that up, to invest more resources in those tools so that we can identify lawbreakers more quickly and get money back to people more quickly. But that principle that we're going to do our own data-driven enforcement rather than simply relying on complaints from workers, I think is a really important one and that I hope to spread to other parts of our work.
Khurram: You've referenced a couple of times companies self regulating, self recognizing when they should be doing the right thing, let's say, or or following the law, let's say. are there at the city level, are there different mechanisms for carrots and sticks at the than than at the federal level? what what are you seeing that's been effective?
Sam Levine: That's an interesting question. I think to me it's not so much about carrots and sticks, it's about what the culture is at these companies. And depending on that culture, you might need to bring out some carrots and sticks. I'll give you another example from the same area, the same area of our work. When the city implemented minimum pay for restaurant delivery workers, many of the app companies, well, two of the app companies, not many of them, responded. by changing their interface deliberately to make it harder for consumers to tip their drivers. Previously you would you could set a tip in the course of ordering your meal. After they made these changes, c consumers couldn't tip unless they affirmatively took a step after they put in their order. What did this mean? It led to more than half a billion dollar fall in tips for New York City workers, was really quite devastating, in terms of how much it reduced their income. So we responded with some sticks. the city responded by passing a law prohibiting that kind of I consider it deceptive design interface and making it easier for consumers to tip. And we were really pleased that a couple weeks ago we were able to announce a significant already more than a hundred million dollars in additional tips for New York City delivery workers in 2026. But again, one of the lessons here is yes, we can respond with the stick, but it also has to do with the culture of a company. Are you a company that wants your workers to thrive, wants consumers to be able to support them? Or are you a company that for whatever reason, maybe you don't like the law, maybe you wanna get back at your workers? I I don't wanna speculate, decides that you're gonna go out of your way to make it harder for people to tip your workers. I think that's the kind of culture I think that leads to more sticks. I think for companies that did not change their tipping interface and tipping held study, they're doing just fine. so I think you do see different cultures of different companies and we'll and and we respond with whatever tools, be they a carrot or a stick, to make sure that these laws live up to their goals.
Khurram: Why why would a company care about whether their w workers are getting tips? Is there just is it the administrative burden of of distributing the tips?
Sam Levine: Well what what some of these companies have said is that tipping is a tax and that consumers shouldn't be forced to tip and I completely agree. But going out of your way to hide tipping options, which is what two of the largest providers were doing, struck me as retaliatory 'cause they didn't like that the workers were getting paid more. Again. I would leave to them to explain for themselves why they made that decision. but at the end of the day we didn't take it lying down. We responded by changing the law and now you're seeing those tips go back up.
Khurram: We've previously talked about every organization has finite resources and has to allocate them. And I think that's an interesting question to explore about how anyone allocates their their priorities with if it's time or financial resources or or whatever. And so you've referenced both workers and consumers a number of time. Between those two buckets, how do how do you allocate time to those? Is is there something you're doing? You know, you've got some policy objective and and and that's something on an ex ante basis, you're able to say, here's how much time we're gonna allocate to work to consumers. So much we're underscoring here is the bottom up component where maybe there's more issues that are right to one. Like how do you think about how to how to distribute your administrative priorities among these two buckets?
Sam Levine: Yeah, it's it's an important question and in so many ways it's the most important question any agency leader needs to confront 'cause there are never never enough resources to to support all of all of the things that are important for an agency to do. in the first instance, when people come to us with financial issues, whether on the worker side or on the consumer side, we try to address it. If you're a consumer who got ripped off, you can file a complaint with us, nyc.gov slash consumers, or call three one one. We will mediate that complaint. I tested this out myself a couple months ago now. I filed a complaint on my own behalf. I got my money back within a week. Last week I actually filed another complaint with my own agency. I think it's really important to, you know, for the boss to know how how things actually work. And so far I've been really impressed. On the worker protection side, it's the same. When workers file complaints, whether it's a freelance worker who hasn't gotten paid, A delivery worker who thinks they faced unfair retaliation. we will investigate those complaints. we have a queue of cases to do so. that said, I think it's also important to not only focus on what comes in the door, we also have to be strategic. What are the big swings we're gonna take? And for that, I'm always driven by all right, let's look at all the complaints we're seeing from consumers or workers. What are the patterns? Where are we seeing consistent patterns of abuse such that we need to take a big swing. You know, an example from earlier this year is we were getting a lot of complaints about self-storage warehouses. This is another one where I have some personal experience, but that's not why we did it, but it happen so happens that I do have some personal experience where they'll lure you in with the teaser rate and then double your price after six months or a year. So what did we do? We sued one of the largest self-storage providers in the country, Extra Space Storage. we later announced $1.7 million back for the city of New York after just a couple months of litigation. and we announced new rules to protect consumers at self-storage warehouses. And again, we did that not because of my personal experience. We did that because we were getting a pattern of complaints. And I felt really strongly rather than just, you know, finding some small self-storage warehouse, making an example of them, let's let's bring a case against a large company to show that nobody's above the law and to show that we're not going to be afraid to take big swings to protect the people of the city. So I I think it's really about identifying the problem based on what what's coming in the door, but then being strategic about how are you gonna bring the case with the most impact. How are you gonna write the rule with the most impact? Maybe you can't write a rule. Then how are you gonna write a new bill with the most impact? So figuring out what the right tool is and then using that tool to to have the most impact.
Khurram: so on the for for for identifying that the after take on your reference. So if somebody, you know, maybe another administration might take on a smaller target to make an example out of them, is that because they assess there'll be like far fewer litigation resources involved, they're just way more likely to settle? was there some risk in taking on a big operator? Can you talk me through that calculus?
Sam Levine: Yeah, I thought a lot about this, especially when I was at the FTC, where I sometimes felt early on during my time at the FTC, there was a certain assembly line culture. and I I don't say this disparagingly, but there was a big you know, I forgot what this rule is, I'm sure you'd be able to tell me, but companies respond to organizations respond to incentives. And when you when you I forget what the term for this is. When you measure something, companies are going to organize themselves around hitting those measurements. and one of the things the FTC measured very consistently over the years is how many cases they brought in a year. And if you're optimizing for how many cases you bring in a year, of course that is going to lead you to bring smaller cases. a two-person operation. when if they get a subpoena from the federal government, they're gonna fold in all likelihood. you send a subpoena to Amazon, it plays out very differently. you know, when we sued Amazon over trapping people in Amazon subscriptions, we probably could have brought five or six cases with the resources we did to do that. to to to bring that single case against Amazon. And if you measure your success just by how many cases you're bringing, that's not a very good strategy. But I was measuring success by what the Oshaw impact we had. And what that case eventually did was return two and a half billion with a B dollars. It was the largest subscription trap settlement in US history. that's a far bigger impact than six cases against corner stores. six cases against mom and pop shops. So I really believe in choosing cases based on the impact you're gonna have rather than how quickly you can put them in in the beginning of the assembly line and split them out the other end. And I think that's the same culture I'm bringing to DCWP. We might have been able to bring two or three cases against a one, you know, a a one person operation in Queens. but that, you know, what message would that have sent? to the thousands of people who have been ripped off by larger providers. What message would that have sent to larger providers who might think that they don't have to worry about enforcement? Enforcement's only a problem for the little guys. I really think enforcement should be based on where the most harm is happening and how you can stop it. And that's that's was my strategy at the FTC. And that's very much something I'm carrying forward in this role.
Khurram: I I I think the law you're referencing earlier was Goodhardt's law, where you know once the metric becomes the toilet, then it seems this to be a good.
Sam Levine: exactly, yes. Yes, exactly.
Khurram: so okay, so on the Amazon front, of course, I understand the value of going after a a large actor. that that there's a lot of scale involved there. That's you know, billion with a B, that's a very focused effort you can you can have. but also in places there's other there's other government agencies that can sue Amazon. And so a a question I have is, you know, for for an agency like yours, to what extent should you be going after some business in Queens or whatever that otherwise is like too small to reach the threshold of what, you know, say the DA's office or or you know the Southern District of New York might prosecute. How how do you think about To what extent do you is there some empirical answer to this? I don't know about what is setting example? Because when you sue Amazon, this is just a guess, I don't know, for some poor behavior, let's say that or or or or some I don't need to characterize whether it's poor or not, just some some some departure from the law. but so let's say some smaller business is so Amazon's got, let's say, storage lockers. Well, some other businesses have storage lockers too. I don't know the answer to this, and maybe there's an empirical answer to this, but to what extent is suing Amazon a deterrent, you know, you know, to smaller operators who say, Well, that's nothing like us. I mean, who cares? And we're probably gonna probably get a fly under the radar. is there an answer to this that that you've explored or or how do you think about this?
Sam Levine: I do think about it. I think about it a lot. I think it depends a lot on the industry. You know, one of the jobs of our department is consumer protection around car towing, right? Getting your car towed. I have not owned a car in almost 20 years, so it's not been an issue for me, but it's an issue for a lot of New Yorkers. And when we go after a tow company, it's not gonna be, you know, some publicly traded company everyone's heard of. It's gonna be some small shop, some much smaller operation. And that's just what you need to do to make sure there's compliance in the industry. Same with employment agencies where we see a lot of fraud, a lot of overcharging people. We just have to go where we see the violations. But I think where I think it's really important to take a different approach is when you're not dealing with just outright fraud, when you're dealing with business practices that companies might believe are legitimate, but that are actually causing significant harm to people. I think to make it clear that those business practices are not acceptable, and that was sort of the original goal of the Federal Trade Commission, you have to be willing to take on. bigger players. I you know, going back to Amazon, for many years it was the norm in this country, in our economy, especially the last decade, decade and a half, that subscriptions were going to be really hard to cancel. it's you know, it's it's become a joke. It was an episode of Friends in the nineties. It was an episode of John Oliver just last week. we're talking in August 2026, just last week, about the difficulty of canceling subscriptions. But one of the things that John Oliver captured really well on a segment last week is the huge aggressive actions that the FTC took during my time there under Chair Khan's leadership to take on these big companies. And I can tell you that has had an effect. if you You know, more than a dozen states have passed laws now to ban these kind of subscription traps that for years companies thought were legal. Some of the biggest companies of the world, like Adobe and Amazon and Vonage, have dramatically changed their practices. Uber has been sued by the Trump administration. It's become bipartisan for trapping people with subscriptions. So in this industry where you had big players engaging in practices they thought was legal, but actually was cheating consumers, I think it took bringing some big cases to really change cultures, but that's ultimately what the FTC did. And we did it in a way that was so smart that we not only had major victories in court, I mean we won partial summary judgment against Amazon, but we got bipartisan buy-in for this work with the Trump administration making it a priority, with r right wing states, red states like Louisiana making it a priority. So I really think it depends on the industry. if you're just dealing with everyday fraud, maybe it makes sense to go after smaller players doing committing that fraud. But if you're going to going after wide widespread business practices that much of corporate America thinks is legitimate, you can't just you can't just beat up on the small players. You need to make clear to the instant the to the biggest players that what they're doing is unacceptable. And I do think that trickles down.
Khurram: Can we go back to the consumer complaints you made? You made cool complaints,
Sam Levine: Sure.
Khurram: what were they?
Sam Levine: So the one the first one I brought was about a CVS coupon that I received and that expired the same day. It was a ten dollar coupon and I did not think it was fair that a coupon should expire the same day you get it in your email. And CVS agreed to give me basically the credit on my C V S card, whatever it was, after D C W P intervened. I currently have a complaint pending against my self storage company, for doubling my prices after after one year with them. So that that complaint is still being mediated and we'll see what happens. But again, I I, you know I I don't call my general counsel and say, fix this problem for me. I that would not be appropriate. I would not do that. I f I filed the complaint as any New Yorker would. And I expected to be treated as any New Yorker. But it was funny actually when when I filed the complaint w about CVS, I got a call on my personal phone, because that's the number I used from one of our mediators. And he he he did know who I was and he said, I usually start these calls by explaining what DCWP is. Would you like me to do that? Or or should we skip that and get to the side? I said, you we can s we can skip that. I have a pretty good idea of what DCWP is. But other than that, you know, I was a ordinary New Yorker. and that was very intentional and I was pleased with the result.
Khurram: say with the coupon thing. If I got that, I'd be annoyed, like, this is dumb. And maybe, maybe they didn't think this through, or maybe they did, and and just they're just trying to get me in the store that day, but I don't really care. What like when you when you as a consumer, we all have complaints, but I can easily imagine a lay person having a reaction like this. When you have a reaction like this. Are you thinking about what's the legal theory of the basis of my complaint? Or I'm gonna work back to figure out what the legal theory is. Because sitting here now, I just consider it to be an annoyance that I wouldn't investigate further, probably. I I guess you'd have to have some sort of theory of inducement. I was induced to go to CVS on the basis of the kind of coupon I might get. but then I think there might be some challenges there because you don't necessarily always know what I mean, like when you get a flu shot, they'll my wife just got her flu shot last week at CVS and said, Hey, we'll give you a yes.
Sam Levine: Yeah. my god, it's the season already. I had forgotten that. That's right. That's right.
Khurram: Just barely, just started. but but yeah, so then they say, Okay, we'll give you five dollar off of twenty coupon and they did. so sure, I mean that could be an inducement where like, hey, like you very clearly expected this specific outcome for this behavior. but t what what tell me about your your intuitions there.
Sam Levine: Well, in this particular case, I had I did have a legal theory, which was that I was a I'm a C V S plus member, whatever the rewards program is, and you're supposed to get a coupon every month for the month, and I was getting the coupon for a one day. So it was simply not in my view, which apparently they credited, not honoring their contractual commitment. But I would make a broader point, which I think many Americans, New Yorkers, maybe don't fully appreciate, which is that one of the amazing themes about consumer protection, you know, I talked about earlier with subscription traps. Companies thought it was legal. Even though deceptive practices are prohibited, companies just thought it was legal because they said there wasn't some law specifically telling them that they couldn't make people Jump through a bunch of hoops to cancel. And the FTC sort of had to build the case that this was an unfair and deceptive practice. but that's exactly how consumer protection law was designed. Congress was very explicit and wise in writing the FTC Act to be capacious, to be to be able to adapt to emerging business practices, to not have to write a new specific law prohibiting every conceivable fraud on the planet. So one of the things I always tell people, and I practice this in my own life, is I I think there's a view people have that, if you sign something or if it's in writing, it's legal, and just s a general sense of helplessness. But if you feel like you're being treated unfairly, if you feel like you're being ripped off, You don't have to find a law that specifically prohibits it. Like tell the government about it. Tell DCWP, tell tell your state AG. These days I'm not sure I would tell, you know, I'm not sure how useful it is to tell the federal government anymore, but certainly tell your local government, tell your state government. And we can look at it. Maybe it is explicitly prohibited by law. Maybe it's not, but we're seeing a pattern of a lot of people facing similar ripoffs and maybe it should be prohibited by law. The whole idea of consumer protection is that it is supposed to evolve to respond to emerging practices. Enforcers only have visibility into those practices if we hear from people. So I always say and I say this at every event you go to, file a complaint with us. You don't need to look up the law. You don't need to know what the law is. You don't need to write a legal brief. Tell us what happened to you. Let us do the work of figuring out whether it might violate some law or whether it might justify some legislative intervention. because this just, you know, shouldn't be happening to New Yorkers. It's an unfair practice.
Khurram: To then in under your approach or approaches you've seen in the city previously, is there anything innovative in legal strategies you're adopting? Can you talk about enforcement strategies, about how you're working up cases, you know, techniques you're using, novel theories? Talk me through through through those those components.
Sam Levine: Yeah, I think one of the most one of the biggest moves we are making, and this is really driven by Mayor Mamdani, and I'm very excited to be a part of it, is building direct feedback loops with New Yorkers. earlier this year, you can't see it, but I have a poster in my office. We had a rental rip off hearing in every borough. And our agency, which traditionally has done virtually no rental work. Except in I mean with with some exceptions I should say. but we really played a key role in you, we participated in every I personally went to four of the hearings. My staff were at all of the hear all five of the hearings. and what we would do, I I sat down in you know, in a gymnasium or in a classroom he having I forgot how long the appointments were. I think four minutes each or something, with each tenant hearing what they were going through in their in their buildings. And from those conversations, and we collectively had dozens of conversations, then they were all compiled. We are now, we've opened investigations. we are in the early stages of planning what rules we might want to write. we now have legislation we're working on writing. So, you know, talk going back to what you said at the beginning, a bottom up strategy. We are really trying to hear directly from people to shape our response. Similarly on subscription traps. we are working with the Office of Technology and Innovation at City Hall to create a seamless process for consumers to very easily direct report violations to us. And again, I'm hoping given the culture change I talked about that we won't see as much violation, but we're trying to make that very direct. So I really am trying to leverage one of the core strengths of this agency, which is as you put it well, I think it's proximity to. you know, actual people, actual New Yorkers. I'm trying to leverage that strength to make us even more responsive to the needs of of New Yorkers, whether they're tenants, whether they're consumers, whether they're workers.
Khurram: I going back again to finite administrative resources allocating allocating resources, how do you think about I think there's a number of interesting trade offs or tension points across these groups. And so let's say for consumers, I I can picture a world where there's some something that's affecting 10,000 well-off families in the Upper East Side, or there's something affecting a hundred thousand less well-off families in Queens. Tell me about that. So let's say the ultimate say dollar impact is about the same. Like, how do you think about allocating resources across groups that have maybe materially different circumstances and resources?
Sam Levine: No, I wanna help the most vulnerable people 'cause I think that's where we can do the most good. if a millionaire gets their ten dollars back That's sort of a a moral victory for them. Perhaps, you know, if someone's struggling to get ten dollars back, that means they can fill their cart. I think well with grocery prices what they are these days. I'm not sure how much how much you can do with ten dollars, but it's a lot more meaningful to them. and I think you s if you look at our work, there's a big focus on Who are the most vulnerable workers, who are the most vulnerable consumers. So take a few examples. There's been a big focus historically at this agency, and certainly under my leadership, on immigrants. making clear that immigrants who face exploitation, retaliation. We've had I've had folks tell me and organizations tell me that immigrants will want to report violations or to us, but their bosses will threaten to take them to ice. Or immigrants who are desperate for help because of fear of ICE are turning to, you know, no so-called notarios who actually are just taking their money and doing no work. We're we're in trial with one of these bad actors right now. these are really vulnerable folks. You know, another big area that we focus on does not get a lot of attention, but it's so important to low income New Yorkers, debt collection. where we finalized this year the strongest debt collection rules in the country, especially around medical debt. Also service of process. This sounds really wonky, but it's a huge issue for low income people, where debt collectors or what have you will sue somebody and the people won't get served with the complaint and they'll get a default judgment and they'll have their wages garnished. So these everyday things don't make a lot of headlines, they don't make a lot they don't get a lot of buzz. You you know, you're not t talking about them on many podcasts. but they're really important to the everyday lives of New Yorkers, so we prioritize them. So I do think it's important to prioritize the most vulnerable consumers. I'll just add, I also think it's important to not fall into a trap. Where consumers are being pitted against workers and workers against small business owners. Something I've seen throughout my career, I especially see it here in New York, is companies really trying to split people. We saw this earlier in the example I mentioned with tipping and delivery apps. The delivery apps thought that they would pit consumers against workers by saying, All right, if you raise the minimum pay, we're gonna move we're gonna, you know, this is a tax on tips, we're gonna make tipping harder for consumers to do. Consumers are sick of tipping. What we've actually found through empirical research this year is once the app companies got out of the way, once they just allowed people to tip, people tipped. Because people actually, New Yorkers actually know how hard it is to be a delivery worker in the city. They know that during the blizzards in February, delivery workers are some of the only folks out there on our streets getting warm food into people's homes. They know that during the heat waves this summer, delivery workers are some of the only folks out there. They want to support the delivery workers and map companies just needed to get out of the way. So we certainly are focusing on the most vulnerable people, but I'm also constantly on guard against bad faith corporate efforts. to divide workers from consumers. I really think there's a broader challenge here to make the economy fair for working people and that really is our North Star at this agency.
Khurram: I I hear everything you're saying in in let's say there's three buckets. There's consumers, there's capital owners, and there's workers.
Sam Levine: Mm-hmm.
Khurram: and I I I totally hear what you're saying that you know there's the capital owners are a third component that is a variable here, but isn't going to be the case that sometimes there is something zero sum about doing things for consumers or or workers? Because that that's that was actually one of the points I wanted to explore with you. Again, with administrative priorities being with the R. I'm just permanently fascinated with with how to allocate resources and and tension points where there's sometimes there's trade-offs. And so isn't the case, at least sometimes there are these inherent trade-offs between things that benefit consumers or things that benefit workers.
Sam Levine: I do think there are trade offs. they're not always. I think sometimes, you know, in the delivery market, for example, food delivery, you know, people predicted when we passed the minimum pay rate that the market would collapse. The opposite's happened. New Yorkers are ordering more food delivered, I believe, than ever in history. The market has only grown. Wages have risen significantly. you know, I I think you could point to examples of price i i if you want to book a hotel in New York, you're gonna pay a lot more, probably, than you would pay in Philadelphia or maybe in Boston or Milwaukee. but our hotel workers are some of the best paid in the country. And I think it's okay, it's more than okay. It's right for n for New York City to just make a judgment call that when we're talking about economic fairness, that if you're a housekeeper in New York City, you should be able to afford a new to live in New York City. If you're a teacher, you should be able to afford to live here. If you're a delivery worker, you should be able to afford to live here and feed your own family. So you're right. Some some questions do involve trade offs. And to me the c All all policy involves trade-offs. The question is who's gonna be at the table? Whose interests are actually gonna be prioritized. I think what you see with this administration is a real commitment to prioritizing the needs of working people. You know, if you are a shareholder and the I I I work right by Wall Street. is where our office is. If if you have money in the market, if you work on Wall Street, if you're a Wall Street bank, you've had an exceptionally good year. You know the biggest bonuses ever at the end of 2025. You've had an exceptionally good couple decades really if you look at the returns in the market. if you're someone who doesn't have investments and you're relying on your wages, you've not done very well. and those wages have been flat for a long time, even as the cost of education, insurance, housing has soared. So yes, there are trade offs. And again, the question is whose interests are we really going to center? And I think the mayor's been clear that we're centering the interests of working people, and I think that's reflected in how our agency is doing our work as well.
Khurram: And that's something else that I'm interested in is in terms of enforcement. So y there's this bottom-up component of you are getting feedback from people directly about issues you're running into. And then you're identifying patterns that make okay, here's we identified a pattern of this kind of issue. Next question is what do we think is the most impactful way to act on this issue? So this is a way to really boost the ROI of of all the kinds of issues you can take on. And so what I'm curious about, you know, you referenced tow trucks earlier and said you yourself haven't had a car in a long period time. my family takes a lot of public transit. We do have a car, but we use it, you know, really for things that you can't use public transit for. and so you know, I I'm I'm in favor of of people owning fewer cars personally. we rent and I you know, of course it's really common for people, particularly with kids, to to own. And so, but I think renting is really underrated. For people generally and then also families. And so I'm curious about to what extent, let's say on the on the on the tow truck thing, it could it could be the case that the city says, hey, all things considered, we want a city with fewer cars, right? So I I'm not ex expert on the congestion pricing issues, but you know, I think just my understanding is all things considered the city wants fewer cars in in the city. or or maybe the city expects, hey, we we want to promote autonomous vehicles. We think that's gonna be incredibly beneficial to the city in the next 10 years or whatever. What are the other policy objectives that that that influence your enforcement strategy, if any, and then what's the time scale that some of these are operating on?
Sam Levine: I mean again I I think it really is going to depend on the sector. If you look in the i i i and and it's gonna depend on sort of the what part of our mission. If you look at what we want for workers, for example, we want delivery workers to be able to have a wage they can actually afford to live in the city. We don't want them to be deactivated without cause. We want some of the most vulnerable workers to have stronger rights in New York City. we want all workers to be able to take time off. We want retail workers to be able to have predictable schedules. And I'm very interested in spreading that model we haven't talked about. But another thing key thing we do is fair work. We getting more predictable schedules for people so that workers can make time for their families, make time for their jobs, make time sometimes it means for second jobs. So I I think it really is going to depend, but fundamentally it's about making sure people, whether it's as consumers or workers, can enjoy dignity in New York City, can afford to put food on the table, can afford their rent. And the mayor's been very clear, Deputy Mayor Julie Sue, who was the Labor Secretary under President Biden, has made very clear that affordability really is not just about prices. It's also about making sure people can afford what they need for everyday life, especially shelter, medical care, food. So it is gonna depend, you know, again, sector by sector and how we're approaching it. But that but that is the overall that's the overall ambition for us.
Khurram: I want to also explore a little more by switching gears to talk about your role with lawmaking. rulemaking, lawmaking. I I'm not really familiar with rulemaking at a city level. but can you talk some more about yeah that dimension of your practice and and and maybe a comparison point to what you did at the FTC? because I think this the skills in Building coalitions and multiple stakeholders. You and I are discuss discussing, you know, before we we we we we hit record today. being able to negotiate multiple stakeholders, I think, is inherent in servicing clients. I think particularly large clients. So even if you're a lawyer, large law firm that has a large client, there's any number of instances where there's multiple stakeholders that need to be addressed, and and these might have concerns beyond legal, they may have. business considerations, which maybe is analogy analogy to other political or policy objectives. So can you talk us more about comparison of FTC in and and the role that you had there in in in in working with lawmakers or rule makers and in how you're approaching that today in your in your practice at the in C at the city.
Sam Levine: Sure. Well when I was at the FTC, one of the things we did, and that's very similar to what we do here, is we provided it was called technical assistance for bills. con you know, members of Congress would draft bills and before they were typically before they were introduced, they would share it with us and we would provide technical assistance on them. And That would always and it was a very high volume business. We got a lot of bills. And all of our technical assistants would have to, among other people, would have to run through me for approval. And I'll be honest with you, I did not spend a lot of time at all reviewing the feedback we provided on bills. I remember saying to someone, you know, let me know if this has any chance in hell of becoming a law. And then I'll pay a lot more attention to it. I really just felt given the dysfunction in Congress that spending my time, my personal time it's something the agency had to do, but for my time, you know, reviewing technical assistance on a law doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of passing was not a good use of of my time. and, you know, I think it was a you know something the agency had to do and I'm I guess I'm glad we did it. But it was just not something I thought a lot about. And in my years at the FTC, certainly as director in consumer protection, I can think of I could probably count on one hand the number of meaningful bills that passed that actually gave us additional authority or responsibility. Come fast forward to New York City, completely different story. We have a council here, that passes a lot of bills. That passes a lot of bills in our chapter, in our area, worker protection bills, consumer protection bills. I've been at multiple celebrations this year of bills passing, whether it's minimum wage for security guards or deactivation protections for delivery workers, that I stood alongside the sponsors and and the stakeholders to celebrate. But that also means we're gonna see a lot of bills that maybe don't make a lot of sense. Maybe that are well intentioned but are maybe don't make sense for us. And I think this is where it really You have to be a you have to be a counselor in the same way that someone has to counsel their client and maybe say to their client, Your goal for this litigation makes sense, but I don't think the strategy you want to pursue is the is the right way to go. Or maybe your goal just doesn't make sense at all. I've had to convert had conversations at times with legislators and just say, you know, I want you I want to manage expectations on this bill. I w you know, I want you to understand that there's significant preemption risk with this bill. At the end of the day, they'll make their own decision. but I find when this is done well, it can be very productive. I had a meeting last week with a a member of the council where they had introduced a very well-intentioned bill. I thought the drafting of it had a lot of problems and was not gonna do what they hoped it would do. So their staff were set to meet with my staff. I called the member the day before and I said, Look, I don't want you to be blindsided in a meeting tomorrow. We have a lot of concerns with how this bill is drafted. We also have some good ideas for you of how it could be fixed. And we're happy to share them. And and they said, Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I'm not wedded to any language. I just want to do X good thing for X community. And we'd have very productive meeting. so I think, you know, in the same way that a lawyer learns how to counsel their client in a way that doesn't, you know, that sort of moves them along. I think it's the same thing I I try to do with lawmakers is say, I get you have this goal and I want to work with you on it. Let's work together to get there, even if it doesn't look exactly like how you're envisioning it from the beginning. I I have seen other I I have seen in government where the lawyers, the agencies would go to the lawmakers or go to their staff and just say, This is Stupid, don't do it. Nobody wants to hear that. In the same way that if you tell your client this stupid, don't do it, they're just gonna find a new lawyer. If you tell lawmakers this is stupid, don't do it, they're just gonna pass the law and they're not gonna take your feedback. I think you have to demonstrate in a sincere way that you share the lawmakers' goals and that you wanna work with them to make sure you're getting there in the most optimal way possible. And that is a skill. and I think it's one that it's a skill that lawyers bring use in private practice. It's one that I try to bring to my work with lawmakers here.
Khurram: What have you developed the most in that skill? Like what what what is if there's one technique that you've cultivated the most that you feel you've made the most progress on applying to success? Like what what is that skill?
Sam Levine: I think it's building one-on-one relationships with lawmakers. I think it's being able to call someone and say, like, be very frank. Like, this is what I'm gonna say in the meeting tomorrow. This is what my staff is gonna say. but here's the deal. Here's where we like I I think appre I think people appreciate candor. I think sometimes there's an attitude at agencies to just say Let the agency staff tell the lawmaker staff what's up, you know, their view on the law. And the way that filters up to the principles sometimes is the agency doesn't want to do this, the agency doesn't want to move forward, the agency is a problem. And I've heard from plenty of council members about problematic agencies that just stonewall them. I never want a stonewall. And what that often means is saying, call in the council member and saying, Look, there's this institutional reason, this is a problem. Here's what the staff's gonna say, here's what I'm gonna say. I'm gonna open this line directly with you. I want you to hear from me directly that I support what you are trying to do. I wanna get us there. Our staff's are gonna have to do some work on the details, but if there's an issue, come to me directly. And I'd like to be able to do the same with you. And I think building that kind of personal relationship is you you could give lawmakers and I I don't mean New York City, I mean at any level, the best arguments in the world for why the law is dumb or unconstitutional or you know, unworkable. And they're not gonna care if they if they just feel you're being oppositional for the sake of being oppositional. If they s if they feel you're just trying to stonewall them. I I think to actually so I think it's actually important to signal you share the goal and you wanna work with them to get them to a good place.
Khurram: The one on one thing sounds incredibly time consuming. and you do got you gotta switch gears. It could be very gratifying, you know, relationships can be very gratifying to build. is there anything that you found effective at scale? I'm thinking of something like, you know, the way that a lawyer might go to an in-house team and give CLE and and say, you know, here's here's things you should be thinking about for the coming year. You know, maybe in the same way you can say, Hey, you know, here's here's you know, here's a primer on preemption. So you understand, like
Sam Levine: Yeah.
Khurram: just it's not obvious how this concept works. Yeah are are there things that you found that facted at scale?
Sam Levine: I have found that personal relationships in government, whether it's with those other city agencies or lawmakers, and this was true in the federal government just as much, are a huge investment of time and are worth every minute. you know, I remember When the s I don't really work from home anymore 'cause my New York City apartment is too small. But when I used to sometimes work from home in DC, my partner would say, You're not working, you're just on the phone all day And I would say to him, That's a lot of my work. you know, i i if you think about where I can add the most value to the work DCWP does, it's not Going line by line on a bill and figuring out how to fix it. I mean I will I will look at our reviews of the bill, but I I you know, I remember there was a I was talking to a stakeholder last week and I said, Look, I want you and I to agree on X and I'm not gonna worry about the details, you can figure out the details with our staff, but th but this is where you and I this is where I would like to get a line with with between you and I. And you know, the rest we can leave to other folks. And I think that's really important. For me, it's sort of and and this is a departure from in some ways how I was trained as a lawyer, or at least how you sort of get through law school successfully. I don't I will not get into the weeds of technical assistance on Bill. And some I mean sometimes I will, under the right occasion. Certainly if it requires a judgment call or policy question, I will. But generally I won't. I'll delegate that a lot. And I will use that time instead to build relationships with people. I think when you have a principal, certainly at a pretty large organization like DCWP, now we have about 400 people here, it is not a great use of the principal's time to be trying to do all the work that you have a 400 person staff to do. I think a lot of the time a better use of the principal's time is to build those relationships with other parts of the government. to make sure that the work coming out of the agency is actually well received, to make sure that the relationships are in place so that we can collaborate with other stakeholders rather than being at odds with other stakeholders. And that really does require engagement principle to principle. And that's why even though it is a very large investment of time, and I routinely, for many years now, I have always included on my calendar hour or two hour blocks that are just call time. For me to catch up on one on one calls with people. I think that's incredibly important and it is takes a lot of time, but it's it's worth it.
Khurram: What you're describing is is let's say let's make an analogy of a law firm. This is like say a partner saying, Hey, like it's not it's not useful for me to get master of the subject matter of this dispute. What's useful to me is building a relationship with a client so that we have
Sam Levine: Yeah.
Khurram: Can manage around ultimate objectives here. And then my team can sort out the the substantive components of this. But I wonder for you, I mean, how much of you know going back to when you were at Harvard Law and then and then taking on this this issue around foreclosure and you know taking it to the Supreme Court, that that required legal skills. That was just
Sam Levine: Yeah.
Khurram: you know, legal acumen, yes, it was augmented by you know, the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau's approach and philosophy around being grounded in the details of actual individuals and and consumers affected by by by certain laws. but in order to achieve those objectives, it was like legal skills that you needed to accomplish those goals. I'm not hearing that as much now in a role. I'm hearing that it's much more relational, coalitional, you know, much bigger picture and way less legal. So I wonder if I got that right. And then i or if there are some what do you feel like is the the legal training you're using on a daily basis?
Sam Levine: I'm certainly still using a lot of legal training. I mean I we we don't file a complaint unless I've reviewed it. I d I'm I mark up complaints, I mark up consent orders, I review, you know, guidance for putting out. I I am enough of a I'm enough of a lawyer and enough of a com enough of a nerd, I guess, that I I want to I I I I certainly anything we're filing in court, any pleadings we're filing in court, I want to look at in advance. And I will have substantive views and substantive questions and theories we're using or not using and and and my team knows that. But I also am mindful that I but it but it is not to the same degree that you know, I'm mindful of what my own role is. It is not to the same degree as if I were the staff attorney. So I will look at a complaint and I will broadly say, I'm just using this as a hypothetical Have we considered an unconscionability theory here instead of solely a deception theory? You know, have we considered looking at how this company is deceiving people? ha have we looked at where this company is deceiving people with design patterns in addition to deceptive representation? So I will engage, but it's with bigger picture questions. It's not where I am going line to line. I used to work with a someone at the FTC who, you know, was was an advisor to a commissioner and when he'd review the pleadings that the agency was gonna file, you know, he would he would make sure the cross references were right. You know, see section two A, he'd make sure that was two A. he was very good at it. I I'm not gonna do that. It was that's just there are other people to do that. I'm gonna make sure at a high level this is making the point we want it to make. It's bringing the right theory, it's using the tools in the right way that I wanna do it. So I still engage quite closely with leg certainly and you know, we also get sued and I engage heavily on the legal strategy, including with the law department. But I also recognize that at the level I am here, my job is not to be another cook in the kitchen. It's not to be another staff attorney. It's to have general goals for litigation, make sure those goals are reflected in the cases we're bringing, but also make a lot of time to maintain the political relationships, which are at the end of the day a prerequisite to everything else we do. We can't do the work we do if the council doesn't give us funds to do it, right? so I I see that as really important. One of the things, one of my great moments of pride this year was the mayor announcing the largest investment in DCWP in the agency's history, the largest increase in the agency's history. It's gonna allow us to hire scores more attorneys and investigators. We're already significantly bigger than we were just a couple of weeks ago. were hiring so quickly. That was only possible because of relationship building. that was only possible because I took the time to to make the calls, to to make the case for why investing in us was a good would generate good returns for the city. If I had spent all my time reviewing pleadings, we'd have a lot fewer pleadings to file because we'd have a lot few lawyers to file them.
Khurram: In working with lawmakers, you know, you mentioned a conversation with lawmaker about trying to get on the same page on an issue. Can can you tell me about a time where there was something that a lawmaker wanted to do that was zero sum with the enfor with the enforcement partyment's goals and you had to resolve that? Or there was a time which there was like multiple lawmakers who had competing goals that were zero sum from an enforcement of of consumer worker protection that you had to resolve.
Sam Levine: Yeah, I'm trying to think about. There's there's there's some live ones I don't wanna say too much about. look, there are laws that I've seen proposed that I I I'm not sure if zero sum is the word, but I I flatly think they're they're bad. They they will not help us do our work well and in fact they will make things harder. And in the first instance you try to discourage it's like stages of grief or something. The first instance you try to discourage them from advancing it, but if they're really committed, it's gonna advance and it's gonna pass. And I I can tell you one thing I I was actually thinking about this morning is there there's a law that that passed, I'm not wild about it. And I'm thinking, you know, how to make lemonade of this? What what could we do? What could we do with this to actually produce something beneficial? And also what can we do with this to sort of manage expectations given what I what I think some of the problems. So I I know I'm being a little vague here because a lot of these are live issues, but you know, I sometimes you have to recognize when you you you just you're gonna lose, right? Like there are times when laws take on a momentum of their own and they're gonna pass. And at some point you have to shift to a mode of, hey, if you can't kill it, you try to fix it. And if you can't fix it, you gotta live with it. And then and then it becomes a conversation of, all right, how are we gonna staff this? How are we going to try to tr you know, maybe we can try to use regulatory enforcement or guidance to try to steer this in a more helpful direction. You just have you just have to shift into a mode of accommodation. and again, I think that's that that's a b a a bigger skill that I I try to deal that I've tried to learn in years in government. I'm sure it's just as true in the private sector is you it's sometimes you just have to recognize when you're not gonna get what you want and then you have to make the best of it. and that's that's something I I have learned to do. I I don't enjoy losing battles, but when you lose battles you can't just wipe your hands up it and say, I'm gonna let this play out and be a disaster to make a point. You have to make the best of it.
Khurram: I my switching gears significantly. So my parents when they first moved to the US, one of the first places they moved to was in Brighton Beach, you know, which is about as far south as you can go in Brooklyn. And so I spent some time visiting there when I grew up in New Jersey and then spent a lot of time in Queens. There's a lot of South Asians in Queens. So those those are two boroughs that I spent time in, but of course I spent a lot of time in Manhattan and a lesser extent Brooklyn. And you've underscored So so I think for a lot of professionals you see the ways that Manhattan and Brooklyn impact, or maybe even for some people, frankly, define New York. but of course there's other boroughs. And so I wonder if you can educate me or others about a way in which right now something is happening in one of these other boroughs that is going to impact the whole city. you know, from from the vantage point of of of your agencies enforcement. tell me about you know what's underrated about one of these other boroughs and in the way that they're they're impacting life in your
Sam Levine: Yeah, sure. So, you know, one of the things that I was naive about, I shouldn't admit this on the record coming into New York, this is gonna sound like people are gonna laugh at me, like how many car dealerships we have in in New York City?
Khurram: Yeah, okay.
Sam Levine: I'm I I live in lower Manhattan. You you will you will not find any car dealerships. in my neighborhood nor will you find it by by my office. But if you go out to Queens, especially Eastern Queens, you'll find a lot of car dealers. There hundreds of car dealerships in New York City. And a big part of the work we do at DCWP, and this is very parallel to what I did at the FTC, in fact, we recently brought a case against the same dealership that I sued or that the FTC sued years ago. are problems in a car dealer market. Where again, if you're a Manhattanite, it's probably not on your radar because you probably don't have a car, and you're probably not that worried. It's sort of the same with the towing that we were talking about earlier. But if if you live in Queens, it's a big deal. And we've been really active over the last six months, seven months now in our car and our used car enforcement. We did a sweep of dealers making sure they're advertising upfront prices. We brought cases. we're in a trial now against Mitsubishi dealer in town. I think this kind of work is probably not particularly salient for folks like me in Lower Manhattan. But if you need a car to get to work, or if you need a car 'cause you have kids and and you got you know, child care responsibilities, then getting ripped off on a used car is a really big deal. So even though it's not a a so so we're we're we are making this a big I should say Staten Island too. there's a big deal on Staten Island as well. And we brought cases against Staten Island car dealerships. So we are very mindful of being attentive to the needs in every borough. I have had meetings with organizations we work with in every borough. Yes, absolutely, including Staten Island. We had a random ripoff hearing out in Staten Island. I really do want to be respon I'm I've met with the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce. I really do want to be responsible to the needs of people in every borough because the New York City one experiences in Lower Manhattan is very different than the New York City one experiences in in South Brooklyn. and that's the beautiful thing about our city and then needs to be reflected in our agency priorities.
Khurram: Okay, conversely, what is it about, you know, people have some information, perceptions, experience about Manhattan and Brooklyn? what is it that through your experience through the you know you you've exposed your sit the city for any number of years and now you've got this insider take on these cities and just s probably see it differently, just see the the the the the guts and the core of it differently. What w if if there's one thing that people should know about Manhattan, people should know about Brooklyn that is not at all obvious, counterintuitive, surprising. What what's that?
Sam Levine: I don't know if this is counterintuitive, but self-storage, what I mentioned earlier, is not a luxury here. I don't wanna say it's a utility, but it's a key part of the affordability equation because most New Yorkers, including me, had to d i if if you moved here from somewhere else, you had to downsize. And if you live in Manhattan certainly or many parts of Brooklyn as a as a kind of middle class person, you probably don't have as much space as you really need. And you need additional space to store your stuff. And the way that and and again, you know Ever you know, when I I grew up in Milwaukee, I never thought about storage. storage is something you maybe use for a month when you're between places. For many of my friends in in the city and c and and for myself, storage is an absolute essential and the way people are being nickel and more than nickel and dime, the way people are being gouged, has really gotten to a point where you know, when we announced our case against Esterspace, we got a flood of complaints. Saying, What about this storage company? What about that? Storage company. If you drive along the East River, you know, if you're driving down the FDR, you will see more self-storage facilities than probably any other any other business. They dot the the riverfront, because this is so important. I and I think sort of the lack of space in Manhattan creates real needs for people. You know, you mentioned earlier that your family sometimes rents a car. to or an another family sometimes rent a car to deal with, you know, whatever needs they have. That's another thing I have had to deal with. you know, there are certain things I need to do. I need to rent a car for and I've seen firsthand the way you get ripped off with rental cars. And last week we just announced our first rental car inspection sweep in more than a decade. And I was informed in part by my experience of seeing how rental cars for many new it's not just a thing for tourists, it's for a lot of New Yorkers who don't have cars still sometimes need cars. So being very mindful to what the specific dynamics are in New York City, and for me personally, being humble enough to know that I'm still learning some of these dynamics. Again, I'm not even gonna tell you. I had a joke with my general counselor where I guessed the number of car dealerships in New York City, and I was off by an order. Or possibly many order possibly multiple orders of magnitude I was so off. So really important to understand the full lived experience of people in every neighborhood of the city.
Khurram: I love that. well look, I I think I think the insights you have are very potent for lawyers who are tangibly thinking about making a move into something that we have public advocacy. so
Sam Levine: Mm-hmm.
Khurram: I think we've gotten a lot of clarity around what are tangible ways that you can make an impact locally. For you, I guess, to to wrap up here then, what is it that you're looking forward to in terms of enforcing priorities in the next six months? What do you expect you, you're talking about personally, the things you're learning, you know, the lived experience and the tangibility of of the issues facing York? what is it that you prospectively can guess? Of course you'll be surprised, about what you'll be learning about in the next six months?
Sam Levine: Two things three things rise to the top. One, I wanna get tens of millions of dollars back in people's pockets. I wanna show that a well funded, well resourced agency, we're still on our road there, can deliver high ROI, as as you put it, can deliver tangible returns for New York consumers and workers. I wanna do that over the next six months, and I wanna do that for the rest of my tenure. two, I really wanna build up the new division I mentioned, our research and analytics division. To really to not only ensure that we're sophisticated on emerging tech, which I'll talk about in a minute, but also to make us more productive as an agency. You know, when we, for example, have fair work week violations or protective time off violations, that can be labor-intensive, you know, reviewing pay stubs, reviewing schedules, to the extent we can start to automate that and significantly increase our productivity as an agency. I'll consider that a real win. And it's exactly why we're investing in this new division, is to make our agency. see more productive and not just to settle for the usual slow pace of government. And the third thing I'm really excited about is I really do want to be on the leading edge of you know, as as we deal with this real tech revolution underway in our economy, I am not expecting any leadership from Washington, DC when it comes to what kind of reforms are necessary to protect consumers or workers. Those reforms are gonna have to be bottom up. So I really want to see coming out of this agency, and I think you will, some of the most cutting edge work to protect consumers from emerging threats, whether it's surveillance pricing, but there's now a city ban been proposed that my department is. supporting and working with the council on to algorithmic scheduling where we're working to expand and enforce scheduling protections for workers to minimum pay to make sure that people can actually afford to live in the city. so I you know I don't know if that would have been a role for a city agency a couple years ago, but in an environment where Washington isn't leading, positioning DCWP not only as a leader deeply grounded in the deeply grounded in New York, with deep connections to the people of the city, but also a national leader in developing the policies and the enforcement strategies to meet the moment role. And that's what it really excites me.
Khurram: I have a bonus question. You mentioned bottom
Sam Levine: Yeah.
Khurram: up to remind me of something else, which is how are you engaging the private bar? How is the private bar something you're learning from? These feedback loops you're talking about, relationships you're talking about, what role is that playing in in in your approach?
Sam Levine: I welcome engagement with the private bar. I'm speaking at the National Advertising Division in a couple of weeks. I don't know if any commissioner before me's ever done that. It's traditionally something the FTC consumer chief does. I I used to do it when I was at the FTC. That's speaking to hundreds of defense lawyers about FT about DCWP priorities. A a a law firm partner reached out to me last month about doing a seminar. I said, I'm happy to do a seminar for the bar. My rule is I don't like it to be private. I want it to be open to the public. I don't want any particular law firm to have special advantages. I said, As long as it's public, I welcome meeting with defense lawyers. I spoke the New York City Bar Association, think it was about a wide range of issues including debt collection and many other issues, about our priorities too. I welcome conversations with the private bar. The best the best defense lawyers are lawyers who really counsel their clients to be in compliance. And if I can help them do that, I'm eager eager to do so.
Khurram: well, hopefully this podcast will be part of you promoting your ideas to the public.
Sam Levine: For sure.
Khurram: but Sam, it was great to have you back. I I keep on learning from you. I I above all admire your passion for advocacy, and your relentless disregard for status. And I think that's something that is a major antidote to so much of the practice of law. but of course I I recognize ironically you've achieved a lot of status in and how much you're you're doing in such a high profile role. So that's the other the fascinating thing is is the ironies of if you if you reject status or reject you know money or or these other kinds of things, they can find their way to you because you get really good at something. but yeah, it's so it's so great to see your the evolution of your thought and and and again going back to how we began the episode, the the prescience so I wonder, you know, what we're laying in foundation here that we might pick up in a couple of years.
Sam Levine: Yeah, that's exactly right. And I would I would close on the same advice I guess that I so presciently offered two years ago, which is that Yes, please. If you i if you didn't believe me in twenty twenty four, believe me in twenty twenty six. If you wanna make a positive difference in people's lives, don't chase prestige. Chase the kind of agencies doing everyday work to make people's lives better, e you know, regardless of who controls Congress or the presidency. And those are local agencies. They're local agencies like ours, but New York City by no means has a monopoly on them. I've been in state government, I've been in local government, and there's so many places all over over the country that you can really get your hands dirty actually making p using your legal skills to make people's lives better. And there's nothing more fulfilling than that. and maybe the status will follow, maybe it's maybe it won't. but there's nothing more fulfilling than thinking you've actually made people's lives better.
Khurram: Thanks, Sam.
