Biography
Daniel Swanson, a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, with offices in Los Angeles and Brussels, focuses on antitrust and competition law, including trial and appellate litigation, class actions, grand jury and civil investigations, merger review, regulatory and competition policy matters, and antitrust counseling. He is the past Co-Chair of the IBA’s Antitrust Section, which is the world’s largest organization of international antitrust practitioners. In addition to antitrust matters, Mr. Swanson has handled a wide variety of commercial litigation disputes. Mr. Swanson graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, where he was a Harvard Teaching Fellow. He is a member of the California and Brussels Bars, is a solicitor of England and Wales and Republic of Ireland. He is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, Federal Circuit and 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th & 10th Circuits. Chambers USA gives Mr. Swanson a “Band 1” ranking and reports that he “has a vast amount of antitrust expertise covering everything from merger investigations to civil and criminal litigation” and describes him as “a highly regarded trial lawyer with a wealth of experience” and as “a ‘tough opponent’ in civil and criminal litigation, alleged cartel matters and IP-related issues.” WHO’S WHO LEGAL comments that “Daniel Swanson is a leading competition litigator whose ‘economics PhD is part of what makes him an outstanding attorney,’” and who “scores very highly for his ‘tenacious and persuasive’ litigation practice across a wide range of competition matters.” THE LEGAL 500 places him in a small group of Leading Lawyers for U.S. antitrust and class action litigation. BENCHMARK LITIGATION GUIDE ranks Mr. Swanson as an Antitrust “National Star” and as a California “Litigation Star.” He has repeatedly been named Best Lawyers’ “Lawyer of the Year” for Antitrust Litigation in Los Angeles, most recently for 2024. Mr. Swanson has litigated dozens of Sherman Act Sec. 2 monopolization and dominance cases—so-called “bet the company” cases ranging from defeating the monopolization challenge to Apple’s App Store in Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple, Inc., 67 F.4th 946, 967 (9th Cir.2023) to defeating the DOJ’s Sec. 2 predatory pricing case against American Airlines in U.S. v. AMR Corp., 140 F.Supp.2d 1141 (D. Kan. 2001), aff’d, 335 F.3d 1109 (10th Cir.2003). Mr. Swanson’s practice has a strong focus on the tech sector, network industries, digital platforms, and media and content businesses. He regularly handles antitrust matters involving patents, copyrights and other intellectual property rights and was asked to testify about standard setting in the DOJ-FTC Joint Hearings re Competition and Intellectual Property Law & Policy.