Charles L. Edwards concentrates his practice exclusively in the area of complex commercial real estate transactions, including purchase and sale; mortgage financing; leasing; joint ventures and partnerships; condominium development and conversion; cooperative housing transactions; general development and all other aspects of commercial real estate practice.

In Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business, the respected English research firm Chambers & Partners lists Mr. Edwards as a Senior Statesman in real estate. Commenting on his "delighted clients," the respected publisher terms him "consummate and focused" and says he is "held in the highest regard by peers" and is "a wonderful practitioner who is always fully engaged." and "a prominent and excellent lawyer, a mentor to clients and peers alike." The PLC Which Lawyer? Yearbook 2009 recommends Mr. Edwards as one of only two "Leading" real estate practitioners named in the state of Illinois, and comments that he is a "veteran transactional, development and real estate finance figure, considered a leading player nationally."

Mr. Edwards has been repeatedly named to The Best Lawyers in America and was named as its 2010 Chicago Real Estate Lawyer of the Year. Mr. Edwards is also recognized in the Guide to the World's Leading Real Estate Lawyers and the International Who's Who of Business Lawyers. In every year since 2005, as the result of research projects conducted jointly by Law & Politics and Chicago magazines, Mr. Edwards has been designated an Illinois Super Lawyer in the area of real estate; from 2005-2008 and again in 2010, he was listed among the state's Top 100 Super Lawyers. In 2008 and 2009, the Illinois Leading Lawyers Network named him first among its Top 10 Real Estate Business Lawyers and he was again named first of that list in 2010 as well as among the Top 100 Real Estate-Related Lawyers in Illinois.

Mr. Edwards was chairperson of a working group responsible for drafting proposed state legislation clarifying the ability to charge "compound interest" in commercial loan transactions and a member of working groups that developed a bar association sponsored form of mortgagor's counsel legal opinion and drafted a non-judicial foreclosure statute for possible adoption in Illinois.

In 1997 and 1998, Mr. Edwards was an adjunct professor of law at The John Marshall Law School, where he taught Real Estate Finance Law in the Real Estate Law LL.M. program. In 2005, he was appointed to serve as a Curley Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School. As a Curley Fellow, he developed and teaches a legal writing and American Legal Practice course, in a commercial law context, in the Master of Laws program. In addition to his appointment, Mr. Edwards has a continuing role as real estate law advisor to various programs at the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. Mr. Edwards is co-editor of the newsletter published by the American College of Real Estate Lawyers.