As a high-powered Los Angeles entertainment lawyer, William (Bill) Sobel (BA 1984 UC) represents a who’s who of show business, but the people he seems to hold most in awe are his parents.
“There are seven billion people on this planet, and if there were seven billion people who lived life the way my parents did, we’d have a different world,” Sobel says.
In their honour, he’s created the John and Edith Sobel Social Justice Scholarship. The scholarship is awarded to undergraduates with strong academic standing who are involved in the University College Literary and Athletic Society (UC Lit), with preference given to students who participate in a UC Lit committee dedicated to equity and diversity/social justice.
When asked what Sobel hopes the scholarship will do for its recipients, he says: “Just to have a chance to pursue their dreams and their passions, whatever they may be.”
Although John passed away in 1995, and, at 90, Edith (née Greenberg, BA 1952 UC) has had to curtail volunteering during the pandemic; the memory of their commitment to giving back inspires Bill to this day.
While the family lived comfortably in Toronto’s Willowdale neighbourhood—his dad was a chartered accountant who served on the board of Chesebrough-Ponds—both parents remained focused on those in need.
Sobel recalls them taking him and his older brother, Mark, as kids to protests to free the “Refuseniks”—Russian Jews who were refused visas to emigrate from the Soviet Union.
“My parents weren’t political,” he explains. “It’s just wherever there was a chance to do right, they tried to do it.”
In a 1942 article from the Toronto Daily Star, his mother, then 11 years old, is one of a group of children pictured who helped raise funds for wartime bombing victims in Britain.
“I think my mother was just born with a positivity gene,” Sobel says. “I haven’t met anybody else quite like her.”
Among Edith’s good works: serving as president of the National Council of Jewish Women of Canada, Toronto section; teaching English as a second language to immigrants; Jewish Camp Council board member; reading to the blind; and volunteering for United Way.
Sobel believes his father’s social conscience was formed from life experience. In 1933, at age eight, he witnessed the Christie Pits Riot, in which a group of youth unveiled a swastika banner at a baseball game in the park between a mainly Jewish team and a gentile team. Violence broke out for several hours with Italians and other persecuted immigrants joining the Jewish players to fight the anti-Semitic group.
“What moved that young boy was seeing strangers helping strangers,” Sobel explains. “On that day, the tribalism of that era in Toronto was suspended and marginalized minorities came together.”
Sobel says his parents’ social values started to rub off on him as a teenager, and the idea of becoming a lawyer took root. “Being an advocate resonated with me.”
As for his post-secondary education, he says: “I was going to U of T, for sure.” Both parents were alumni, and Sobel says choosing UC was inspired by his mother’s fond recollections of her time there.
“It was her coming of age—being part of UC Players and Hart House. The thrill of her life, if you ask her, would be having her two children, but the independent thrill of her life would be her years at UC.”
Among “the fascinating people” his mother met at UC was the late Alan Borovoy (BA 1953 UC), the longtime general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. In the 1960s, Edith would help Borovoy by advocating on a local level for his mission to eliminate religious education from the curriculum of Ontario public schools.
At U of T, Bill studied commerce and economics, and he remains a loyal alumnus. “Giving back to University College and U of T is not a choice; it’s a moral obligation,” he says.
For law school, he alternated semesters at Osgoode Hall and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles—he says he “got the bug” for the city visiting his brother who was at UCLA and who later became a television director there. “It wasn’t a coincidence my winter semesters were in L.A. and my fall semesters were in Toronto,” Sobel quips.
A combination of not wanting to be a litigator and being in the “epicentre of the entertainment industry,” which he found fascinating, propelled Sobel to stay and pursue entertainment law. After getting his start at a then-preeminent L.A. entertainment law firm, he moved to the firm now named Laird & Sobel, where he’s been for 35 years.
The long list of boldfaced names he’s represented include Dolly Parton, Mickey Rourke, Julianne Moore, Salma Hayek, and Prince. In addition, Sobel helps co-ordinate some of their charitable work and has even produced concert-tour television specials. He gained proficiency in concert touring, he says, when he worked on Michael Jackson’s tour in the 1990s. But he’s adamant about not taking any credit for his clients’ accomplishments and remaining the ultimate behind-the-scenes man.
“So much of what I do involves standing up for people who maybe have a loud voice,” he explains. “But then you have to make sure that voice is heard over other things that can be said.”
When Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida and Miley Cyrus, a longtime client, wanted Miley to participate in the March for Our Lives gun control protest in Washington, D.C.—in response to the February 2018 mass shooting at the school—Sobel helped ensure she was on a plane two days later.
And when journalist Ronan Farrow asked Sobel to go on the record for a New Yorker article about the sexual misconduct of CBS’s then-head, Les Moonves, he was the only industry business person to do so. While Sobel admits the experience was stressful, “If you’re going to do the right thing, you’re going to do the right thing no matter what.”
When not representing clients, Sobel enjoys family life in Beverly Hills with his wife, Lisa, and his daughters on their breaks from school. Juliet, 23, is a law student at Northwestern University and a passionate advocate for women’s rights; and Amanda, 20, is a junior at the same school and an advocate for animal rights. Sobel’s mother, who moved to Los Angeles after his father passed away, lives nearby and remains vital.
“When I’m travelling the world with an artist and I find myself shaking hands with a head of state or in a surreal escorted police motorcade, I’ll ask myself: ‘How did I get here?’” Sobel says. “I realize my parents’ values and the opportunities afforded me by institutions such as UC have been vital to my journey, and I owe a huge debt of gratitude.”
Images supplied by Bill Sobel
The inaugural recipient of the
John and Edith Sobel Social Justice Scholarship
In describing who he hopes will benefit from the University College scholarship he’s created to honour his parents, entertainment lawyer and UC alumnus Bill Sobel says, “We want to make it accessible to people who are creative and passionate, but, ultimately, people who are doers and believe in doing.”
Liam Patrick Bryant (BA 2021 UC), the first recipient of the John and Edith Sobel Social Justice Scholarship, ticks all those boxes. Bryant, who uses “they/them” pronouns, was an editor and contributor at the Gargoyle and the Varsity; head illustrator at the Goose journal; head leader of UC Orientation; a campus tour guide; and a treasurer and archivist at Sir Daniel Wilson Residence. But since a main requirement of the scholarship is that the undergraduate be involved in the UC Literary and Athletic Society, it’s Bryant’s tenure as UC Lit president that’s of primary importance.
“Being president was defining for the latter half of my tenure at U of T,” says Bryant. “The role means working alone but not necessarily in a vacuum. I would have been nothing without my close friends and, at times, fellow council members: Andrea Estrabillo, Aniket Kali, Francesca Field, and Chloë Gorman.”
Despite a stellar university career, Bryant, 22, says it was a challenging time. At 18, they moved on their own to Toronto from San Diego. While they had family financial support, they found a job “and budgeted, saved and thrifted constantly.” They’ve also had lifelong health issues, which they struggled with at university –“though over the years my health improved—credited to my friends and support from my dons in two years living in residence at UC.”
Bryant, who did a specialist in art history, is now in a graduate program for museology at the University of Washington in Seattle.