As many of us know, the Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, is stepping down and running for Chris Dodd’s U.S. Senate seat. Several candidates have stepped forward indicating that they are going to run for Attorney General. The Connecticut Attorney General has a significant impact on businesses in this state. For one thing, the Attorney General often brings lawsuits to protect businesses and consumers related to unfair trade practices. For example, within the last few days, Attorney General Blumenthal filed a lawsuit on behalf of over 400,000 Connecticut residents related to the Health Net data breach. The old saying in legal circles is that the Attorney General runs the largest law firm in the state.
Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz is one of the candidates running for Attorney General. Ryan McKeen, at A Connecticut Law Blog, has a very interesting post today about whether Susan Bysiewicz has the legal resume to meet the statutory qualifications to be elected Attorney General based on needing 10 years in "active" law practice. The media has jumped on his blog post and there are several reports on it already in the news. The Bysiewicz campaign has responded and claims that she is qualified despite only six years of practice in the state based on her years of "supervising" attorneys at the Secretary of State’s office. Now that the issue has been joined, everyone is waiting for Ryan to respond, including me.