Economic Justice Attorney & Strategist
North Carolina Roots. National impact.
Nearly twenty years finding the leverage others missed — in court, with regulators, and in the public record.
Matt Liles 13th-generation North Carolinian · UNC Law · CFPB · NC DOJ
$1.85B
Navient settlement · 39 states
$142M
Student debt cancelled · 12,000+ NC borrowers defrauded by large for-profit schools
$100M
Junk fees eliminated · K–12 families nationwide
Almost 20 years
Advising state and federal leaders on how to attack complex problems
43M
federal student loan borrowers protected from illegal servicing practices during return to repayment post-COVID
Who I am
I went to law school to become a civil-rights lawyer and found my calling pursuing economic justice.
The son of two public school teachers, raised in Zebulon, I came to a conviction early that economic stability is the foundation upon which every other form of justice rests. For nearly twenty years, I have worked to find the legal and strategic leverage to make that conviction real — taking on the servicers, lenders, and institutions that quietly extract money from people who have no obvious recourse.
Selected Work
Litigation & Enforcement
Closing Charlotte School of Law
A private equity-backed law school that knowingly admitted students with an 18% chance of ever passing the bar — then charged them $200,000 for the privilege.
~300
Students whose debts were canceled.
Litigation & Enforcement
Navient multistate investigation
Led North Carolina's role in the landmark multistate investigation of the nation's largest student loan servicer — coordinating across 39 state attorneys general.
$1.85B
Settlement · relief for borrowers nationwide
Policy Leadership
Eliminating school lunch junk fees
Designed a multi-pronged legal and advocacy strategy targeting payment processors charging families $4 per transaction just to manage their child's meal account.
$100M
In fees eliminated annually
This site exists to go a step beyond what I can share publicly. While platforms like LinkedIn are useful, my background in law enforcement and government work requires discretion. This space allows me to share my professional journey, values, and ways of working with people I trust and am excited to collaborate with.
The site is organized around core areas of my work, with case studies that explore specific projects in consumer protection, education, and related fields. Each case study looks at the problem we were trying to solve, the strategy we pursued, and the impact that followed.
Together, they reflect how I approach hard problems: values-first, purpose-driven, and focused on building systems that work better for people.