Charles-Theodore Zerner is a principal attorney in Munck Wilson’s complex commercial litigation and dispute resolution group, distinguished by his twenty-year passion for and engagement with artificial intelligence. For the past decade, Charles has intertwined his career as a complex commercial litigator with his artificial intelligence acumen, cultivating genuine cross-domain expertise to improve the factfinding process and help clients navigate the intricate landscape of AI-related legal matters.

Charles has helped clients resolve a broad range of high-stakes commercial disputes, including contract disputes, trade secret misappropriation, copyright and patent infringement, antitrust claims under the Sherman Act and related unfair competition, business torts and breach of fiduciary duty claims arising in corporate, LLC, and family trust contexts, securities fraud, RICO, and claims under the False Claims Act, among others, in matters ranging from $50,000 to over $1 billion in controversy.

What truly sets Charles apart is his longstanding engagement with AI technologies. Charles’ work with artificial neural networks (the technology that underlies ChatGPT) began in 2000, when he cofounded a neural-network-based company with an early leader in the field. For over a decade, Charles has applied his passion for data and understanding of AI to his legal practice to expedite early case assessment and discovery, enhance internal investigations, reduce costs, and inform strategic decisions.

Charles’ blend of legal and technical acumen is of unique value to clients across a spectrum of litigation scenarios. His skills significantly enhance complex litigation and internal investigations involving extensive datasets. They also prove invaluable in investigations, cases involving software development, data privacy, or that revolve around advanced AI technologies.

Beyond litigation, Charles is increasingly serving in an advisory role, where his cross-domain experience and understanding of AI technology, safety, and ethics, make him a trusted resource for clients seeking guidance on AI deployment and emerging issues in a rapidly evolving technological and regulatory landscape.

Charles earned a B.A. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University, where he received the prestigious David McCord Prize for musical achievement. Charles earned his J.D. from Tulane University Law School, graduating summa cum laude and ranking among the top 5% of his class. His accolades include being recognized as one of the ‘Best Lawyers in America©’ for commercial litigation from 2019 to 2023.

  • Helped secure favorable settlement in litigation over ownership of an NFL football team and NBA basketball team, in high profile case with over $1 billion at issue;
  • Secured dismissal of all federal antitrust and state law tort claims in high-profile case with over $200 million at issue involving the alleged monopolization of the market for landfill waste disposal in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina;
  • Secured the survival of medical device company with over 500 employees accused of submitting over false claims to Medicare and Medicaid in “bet-the-company” dual-track regulatory and federal court action joined by DOJ;
  • Helped to secure dismissal of all trade secret claims against a pharmaceutical company in a case with over $100 million at issue;
  • Helped a Fortune 500 energy provider obtain favorable settlement in highly technical copyright dispute;
  • Successfully represented clients in the energy sector in high-dollar contract, trade secret, and regulatory matters;
  • Assisted clients in various stages of commercial litigation for matters involving contractual disputes, securities fraud, environmental torts, non-disclosure and non-compete agreements, secured transactions under UCC Article 9, and insurance matters;
  • Perform legal research and draft court pleadings, including complaints, answers and pretrial motions – including motions to dismiss and motions for summary judgment in cases with over $100 million in controversy;
  • Sophisticated e-discovery experience performing early data assessments, drafting and executing e-discovery plans, training predictive coding algorithms to achieve high F1 scores, using data filtration tools, clustering algorithms, drafting complex traditional searches and teaching CLEs and publishing articles on the same;
  • Successfully helped clients to recover (or avoid) millions of dollars in damages at trial level and obtained the reversal of an award of over $7 million on appeal.

Press Releases

Munck Wilson Mandala Welcomes Litigation Associate Charles Zerner

Zerner received his J.D., summa cum laude, from Tulane University Law School, where he served as an article editor of the Tulane Law Review. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts with honors from Harvard University. While in law school, Zerner served as a judicial intern and presented an oral argument in the United States Court

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Tulane University Law School, JD, 2012

summa cum laude

Order of the Coif

Harvard College, BA, 2002

David McCord Prize for Musical Achievement

  • State Bar of Texas
  • State Bar of Louisiana

 

  • Best Lawyers in America
    2019-2022
  • Louisiana Rising Star, Thomson Reuters
    2016-2020
  • Associate Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America
    2017
  • New Orleans Top Lawyers for Antitrust, New Orleans Magazine
    2016

Louisiana, 2012

Texas, 2022

U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana

U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana

U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana