ZAUDERER
Mark

• 1. Career

Mark C. Zauderer is a New York trial and appellate lawyer, and a senior partner in the New York law firm of Dorf Nelson & Zauderer LLP.

He frequently comments on legal issues in the print and television media and lectures on litigation-related issues.

Career

From 1971-1972, Zauderer served as the law clerk to the Judge Robert Shaw, United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. In 1981, he co-founded the law firm of Solomon, Zauderer, Ellenhorn, Frischer & Sharp. In 2005, he joined Flemming Zulack Williamson Zauderer LLP, where he remained until 2018, when he joined Ganfer Shore Leeds & Zauderer LLP. In 2023, Zauderer joined the litigation department of the firm of Dorf Nelson & Zauderer LLP.

Zauderer has served as the lead trial lawyer in many significant business litigations. He litigated the successful appeal of a seminal case defining the extent of the extraterritorial application of the U.S. Securities Laws. Zauderer served as defense co-counsel in a suit brought by Eliot Spitzer, who was at the time the attorney general of New York state, against the former chief of the New York Stock Exchange, Richard Grasso, to recover Grasso's allegedly improper $187.5 million pay package. All claims against Grasso were eventually dismissed.

Zauderer has frequently represented major law firms in complex litigations and trials involving breach of fiduciary claims by former partners, and in significant malpractice matters. In 2010, he obtained a dismissal of a $500 million malpractice suit against the international law firm of Chadbourne & Parke. In 2012, Zauderer represented a group of 57 former partners from the failed law firm of Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP in a highly publicized bankruptcy proceeding seeking to claw back pay and other benefits from the former partners. In 2015, he was appointed a referee with all the powers of the New York Supreme Court, to adjudicate all disputes between the partners of the national law firm Napoli Bern, and to oversee the dissolution of the firm and transition of its 24,000 clients.

Zauderer represented former Clinton administration cabinet member Ronald Brown, at the time the United States Secretary of Commerce, in a lawsuit brought against him and the major television networks by former presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy. McCarthy alleged that Brown, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, had improperly excluded him and others from the televised 1992 presidential debates. The claims against Brown were dismissed.

Zauderer is a director of the New York International Arbitration Center and a member of the American Arbitration Association's National Roster of Commercial Arbitrators.