Described as one of the defense bar’s “wisest legal talents” by Washingtonian magazine, a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, and a top-rated attorney in the current edition of The Best Lawyers in America, co-founder Roger Spaeder has spent more than three decades building Zuckerman Spaeder LLP. He retired from the practice of law in 2007, but continues part-time with the firm in a professional development capacity.

Mr. Spaeder’s practice focused on criminal and civil litigation, with a concentration on the defense of federal enforcement investigations and prosecutions. He was an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia for five years, and in 1976 joined Roger Zuckerman in private practice. During his career in private practice, Mr. Spaeder served as special counsel to the Executive Office of the President of the United States, defending the White House Counsel's Office against allegations of obstructing justice in a civil proceeding. He successfully defended a former U.S. Secretary of Energy on bribery allegations and represented the former general counsel of the CIA in an investigation concerning unauthorized release of classified information, which resulted in no charges being filed against the general counsel.

Throughout his career, Mr. Spaeder regularly represented corporations and their senior executives in investigations of criminal securities fraud, government contracting fraud, healthcare fraud, export licensing violations, tax evasion, bank fraud, and antitrust violations. His post-Enron experience included the representation of high-profile public company executives before the SEC and federal grand juries. His civil litigation practice included the defense of federal antitrust litigation, shareholder class and derivative actions, false claims actions brought by qui tam relators, and business tort litigation.

Mr. Spaeder has been a faculty member of the Attorney General’s Advocacy Institute, National Institute of Trial Advocacy, Georgetown University Law Center (adjunct lecturer), and Harvard Law Litigation Program. He also chaired a Georgetown and ABA-sponsored annual symposium on federal enforcement for more than a decade and was Cardozo Prize Judge at the Yale Law School in 1992.