Whitney Z. Bernstein

White Collar Criminal Defense, Internal Investigations, Business Tort Claims & Appeals

San Clemente

Whitney Bernstein has dedicated the past twelve years to practicing as a white-collar criminal defense attorney and has also been a civil litigator for six years. Inspired by her mother, Evan Zuckerman, a public defender who recently achieved a full acquittal in a murder trial, Bernstein said she was drawn to criminal defense to hold the government accountable, give defendants a voice and humanize the justice system.

"I grew up wanting to fight for people who were indigent, less fortunate and often from marginalized communities," she said. "I believe that a person charged with a crime deserves the best defense possible regardless of means."

Starting her career as a public defender in Brooklyn, Bernstein represented hundreds of individuals, honing her skills as a trial attorney. She later joined the Federal Defenders office in San Diego, where she continued to represent people charged with federal crimes at various stages, including trials, sentencing, and appeals to the Ninth Circuit.

In 2018, Bernstein transitioned to Bienert Katzman Littrell Williams LLP, expanding her practice to include civil litigation.

US v. Arabi, et al., which is the criminalization of Qualcomm's accusation, has already been litigated and resolved in civil court. Bernsten's client, a former Qualcomm employee, allegedly invented technology that the multibillion-dollar company acquired in 2015, which she said he did not.

"We have litigated many indictment challenges and argued issues that could resurface on appeal such as whether there is any traditional property interest at stake to support government's shoehorning of this resolved business dispute into a wire fraud prosecution, whether Qualcomm's invention assignment agreement is unenforceable and contrary to California law and public policy, and the application of patent law to this criminal indictment," Bernstein said.

She added because other defendants have either cooperated with the government or are fighting extradition, she's representing the sole defendant going to trial in January 2025.

Bernstein said she was also honored to have previously defended Jim Larkin in U.S. v. Lacey, et al., which she described as the government's dangerous and disingenuous decades-long pursuit of the former owners of the classified website Backpage.com, contrary to established First Amendment jurisprudence.

"We secured a mistrial in 2021 due to prosecutorial misconduct," she said. "The government retried the case against the other defendants in 2023 and is seeking a third bite at the apple against co-defendant Michael Lacey on the many counts he recently hung."

Bernstein concluded: "A main obstacle in recent white-collar cases has been the government's aggressive pre-trial asset seizures and liberal interpretation of allegedly 'tainted' funds, which cuts defendants off at the knees and often implicates their Sixth Amendment right to counsel of their choosing."