Charles R. Work

Director, Atlantic Legal Foundation

Member, Executive Committee
Phone: 202.748.5902
Email: charles.r.work@gmail.com
Charles Work - Director, Atlantic Legal Foundation

Charles R. Work is a retired capital partner in the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP. He was the former head of that Firm’s Regulation and Government Affairs Department, and was the Partner-In-Charge of the Washington, D.C. office from 1983 to 1997.

Chuck is the former outside general counsel of the AeA, formerly known as the American Electronics Association, and the former general counsel of the Intellectual Property Owners Association.

He has been involved in a number of leading cases. He was co-head of a team which prevailed and received national media attention in a patent trial in the U.S. District Court in Delaware involving contact lenses, Wesley Jessen Corporation vs. Bausch & Lomb, Inc. He was lead trial counsel in United States of America v. Quorum, a significant health care fraud case in the U.S. District Court in Tampa, Florida. He was also co-lead counsel on behalf of the Lockheed Martin Corporation in the case of United States of America v. Lockheed Martin Corporation and Northrup Grumman Corporation, in which the United States sued to enjoin the merger of the two companies. He was lead counsel in the case of Aristotle Publishing, Inc. v. CDB Infotech, a case involving data rights, which also received national media attention. He was co-lead counsel in the case of Inslaw, Inc., et al. v. The United States, a case involving intellectual property rights to computer software. He also was appointed by the United States District Court as guardian ad litem of the Vietnamese orphans who survived a plane crash in Saigon in 1975. 

Chuck has handled civil and criminal matters in state and federal courts as well as matters before various federal agencies, including the International Trade Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of the Independent Counsel. Chuck has on a number of occasions represented former government officials, business executives and trade association executives with respect to employment contract and compensation issues.

He is a former president of the D.C. Bar, a former deputy administrator of the Law Enforcement Assistant Administration (nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate) and a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia. In the U.S. Attorney’s office, where he served for seven years, he concluded his career as chief of the Superior Court Division, the division responsible for prosecuting all local crime in the District of Columbia. In 1978, he received the Rockefeller Public Service Award for Administering Justice and Reducing Crime. Chuck served as the president’s appointee to the D.C. Commission on Judicial Tenure and Disabilities, the body that reappoints and disciplines the judges of the District of Columbia from 1985 to 1999. 

Scroll to Top