Norman Sepenuk was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1933. He attended Rutgers College and transferred to Princeton University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1954. He then served in the U.S. Army until 1956. In 1959, he earned a law degree from Harvard Law School. He practiced law in Jersey City until 1961, when he relocated to Washington, D.C., to work for the Department of Justice Tax Division. In 1963, he and Barbara Hammond were married; they later had three children. In 1965, U.S. Attorney Sid Lezak requested Sepenuk’s assistance in an Oregon tax evasion case, and soon after that, Lezak offered him a job. Sepenuk worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Oregon from 1965 to 1972. He left the office briefly in 1968 to attend the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where he earned a master’s degree in public administration in 1969. In 1971 he was selected as one of two attorneys from Oregon to serve on the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws (also known as the Brown Commission). In 1972, he entered private practice and worked as an independent defense attorney in Portland, Oregon, with a focus on white collar crime.