About Maren Swanson

In 2016, I celebrated 35 years as a lawyer. I did not grow up among lawyers nor did I have a lifelong dream to be a lawyer. I grew up in Northfield, Minnesota, graduated from St. Olaf College with a major in English, and got a master’s degree at the University of St. Thomas intending to teach high school English. Then, just for “fun,” I took a night class on sex-based discrimination in law and was inspired to apply to law school.

When I entered the University of Minnesota Law School, my grand ambition was to use the law to overcome social injustice on a large scale. It has turned out that my work as a lawyer has been on a much smaller scale, helping one client at a time accomplish something essential to his or her life, but this work has come to feel as important, and sometimes as monumental, as overcoming social injustice!

When I began practicing law in Owatonna in 1981, I was a “GP”–a general practitioner. I handled everything from divorce to real estate, wills and probate, criminal defense, civil litigation, and more. After moving to Northfield in 1986, I was assistant city attorney for 2 years and then city attorney for Northfield for over 20 years. I remained in private practice during that time and continued to handle family law and other matters as well. While I remain something of a “GP,” since 2010 my practice has focused primarily on family law, as well as on government law from the perspective of the private citizen–helping people deal with how government impacts them.