Charles B. Updike

Charles B. Updike is the firm’s senior partner and its most experienced trial lawyer. He has tried more than 60 cases to verdict, most of them before juries. He handles appeals for his own and other lawyers’ clients and is an accomplished appellate advocate. He is familiar with and has actively participated in all aspects of alternative dispute resolution.

Mr. Updike has broad experience in multiple areas of litigation. He has tried cases in the areas of product liability, health care delivery, construction, real property development rights, commercial torts, breaches of a wide variety of commercial contracts, breaches of M & A agreements, securities claims, and internal partnership and corporate disputes. Mr. Updike has been national counsel in a product liability mass tort and has served as general counsel with respect to litigated matters in the United States for a major multi-national corporation. In the latter capacity, he supervised the work of lawyers nationwide. He is counsel to a national trade association and is regularly consulted by its members with respect to litigation and claimsissues with special emphasis on how to prevent them. Mr. Updike regularly represents universities, colleges and secondary schools in a wide variety of matters, including employment, sexual assault, sexual harassment, workplace safety, workplace violence and Child Victims Act (CVA) litigation and investigations. Presently, Mr. Updike is advising a prominent independent school in navigating the return to work during the COVID-19 public health emergency, addressing issues that arise under federal, New York and local laws and regulations.

After graduating from Amherst College, Mr. Updike served in U. S. Army Intelligence, where he was trained as an investigator and conducted investigations while he pursued a Masters Degree in Economics. During law school, he worked for a Boston law firm as an investigator. After law school, he was Law Clerk to a federal judge in the Southern District of New York and then went directly into the United States Attorney’s Office, where he became head of the Narcotics Unit, tried some of its most difficult cases, oversaw hundreds of investigations and supervised other Assistants. He has continued to conduct investigations to date. He has taught New York Practice and Procedure as an adjunct professor at Cardozo Law School and has taught trial practice at Harvard and Hofstra Law Schools.

He is active in a variety of bar associations and serves on several boards, both commercial and charitable.

Bar and Community Service:

• Guest Faculty, Trial Practice Workshop, Harvard Law School
• Guest Faculty, Trial Practice Workshop, Hofstra University
• Adjunct Professor of Law, Cardozo University Law School
• Director, New York Environmental Advocates
• Director, Cancer Prevention Research Institute
• Director, Camp Dudley
• Director, National Platform Tennis Museum and Hall of Fame
• Director, The Adirondack Explorer
• Former President, Society of the Alumni, Amherst College

In addition, Mr. Updike has played leadership roles in Association of the Bar of the City of New York; the American Bar Association; and the Federal Bar Council.