Swanson picked as one of “Top Ten Lawyers of the Year.”
Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson, a Democrat, has been selected as one of Lawyer USA's Top Ten Lawyers of the Year. The publication praised Swanson's work on consumer protection:
"She toppled the dominant player in debt arbitration in the country and changed the face of consumer credit card arbitration overnight.
Lori Swanson, Minnesota's Attorney General, filed a consumer fraud suit against the National Arbitration Forum in July, alleging that the firm worked closely with creditors and debt collectors behind the scenes, against the interests of consumers while claiming to be a neutral forum.
Five days later, she secured a consent decree in which the NAF , without admitting blame agreed to cease its credit card arbitration business. Within days, the American Arbitration Association announced that it too would stop its involvement in consumer debt collection arbitration until it could develop standards.
In the consumer law world, it was a shocker. Consumer attorneys hailed Swanson's work as the finest piece of lawyering in consumer practice in years, leveraging the state's subpoena power to uncover a one-sided system that private attorneys suspected all along."
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