CLASS NOTES Norman Oberstein ’65
A Star-studded Career That Has Been ‘All Good’ Norman Oberstein has built a colorful career and a satisfying life around serendipity. After graduating from the University of Iowa, he had an enviable choice between Boalt Hall or Stanford Law. The financial challenge of Stanford edged Oberstein to Boalt, where he eventually pursued a post-graduate fellowship in Geneva. On his passage to Europe, he met a young Swiss woman named Margrit—now his wife of 47 years. Oberstein was a senior partner and managing member at Kaplan, Livingston, Goodwin, Berkowitz & Selvin in Beverly Hills, and in 1982 formed his own firm. Specializing in business, entertainment, and family law, he enjoyed litigating tough, high-profile cases. But they didn’t always unfold as expected. Consider his two cases involving Johnny Carson: Oberstein represented NBC against Carson when he sought to break his Tonight Show contract. Carson won that case—then tapped Oberstein to represent him in his third and last divorce, which Carson won as well. Oberstein also represented actress Sondra Locke in a daunting palimony suit against Clint Eastwood. Circumstances shifted when Eastwood was found to be secretly recording Locke’s conversations with Oberstein—providing a more valuable cause of action than the initial suit. Other high-profile clients included Puma (when basketball star Vince Carter breached an endorsement contract), Mohamed Al Fayed (thwarting con artists trying to demonstrate a conspiracy to assassinate his son and Princess Diana), and Caesars Palace (against singer Eddie Fisher, whose drug use interfered with his performance commitments). Contact with Carson’s accountant led to another client, Frederick Lenz. Lenz later instructed that, upon his death, Oberstein help form the Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism, which brings
Securities practice, he founded the firm’s Washington, D.C., office in 1979. From 2006 to 2008, he was the Securities and Exchange Commission’s counselor to the chairman and deputy chief of staff. He also served as group 60
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executive vice president and general counsel for Bank of America, where he negotiated, closed, and implemented more than 30 acquisitions— including some of the largest and most complex in the industry.
mindfulness programs to universities, prisons, and other communities. Although overseeing the foundation wasn’t how Oberstein envisioned retirement, it has proven fulfilling—largely by bringing him back to Boalt. With adjunct professor Charles Halpern, Oberstein is involved in the school’s growing Berkeley Initiative for Mindfulness in Law. “If you’d mentioned mindfulness when I was at Boalt, everyone would have laughed,” says Oberstein. “Today, it’s a powerful coping tool in a stressful profession.” In 2006, Oberstein merged his practice with Gipson Hoffman & Pancione, where he remains of counsel. When he isn’t in his Los Angeles office, Oberstein can be found biking, hiking, or tackling black diamond ski runs in Utah and Switzerland. Although mindfulness training teaches not to become attached to anything in life—good or bad—he happily reports that these days “it’s all good.” And as experience has shown him, good often comes from unexpected sources. —Betsy Brown
1966
Charles Breyer, appointed
to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. A federal judge in California since 1998, Charles will help the commission establish sentenc-
ing policies and practices for federal courts. The commission consists of seven voting members, at least three of whom must be federal judges. Charles was a private-practice lawyer from 1974 to 1997, save for a brief stint as San