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Independent since 1961
Marlowe & Sterling advises businesses, institutions, and families on transactions, disputes, and investigations where the outcome changes what the organization is. We are independent by choice, which is why we are able to tell a client that the work it has asked for is not the work it needs.
Two hundred and fourteen lawyers across four offices. No network, no alliance, and no office that keeps its own profits — so a matter is staffed by the people best suited to it rather than the people nearest to it.
Practice Areas
Most matters we take on touch two or three of them at once. The teams are built that way from the first meeting rather than assembled after a problem crosses a boundary.
Acquisitions, carve-outs, joint ventures, and the governance that has to survive them.
Litigation and international arbitration in matters where the outcome changes the business.
Internal and government investigations, enforcement defense, and the controls that prevent the next one.
Fund formation, secondaries, and regulatory counsel for managers and institutional investors.
Patent and trade secret disputes, licensing, and the agreements governing data and models.
Development, investment, and financing across logistics, data centers, and energy assets.
Senior transitions, restrictive covenants, workplace investigations, and the employment side of transactions.
Succession, governance, and philanthropy for families whose principal asset is a business.
How we practice
Marlowe & Sterling has practiced from lower Manhattan since 1961 and has stayed independent by choice. Two hundred and fourteen lawyers, four offices, and one standard of work.
A matter should be staffed with the smallest team capable of doing it well. We would rather bill fewer hours and be asked back than the reverse, and we tell clients when a piece of work is not worth doing.
Clients receive a view, not a survey of possibilities. Where the answer is genuinely uncertain we say so plainly and explain what would resolve it, rather than describing the uncertainty at length.
A client in Singapore receives the work of the firm, not the work of an office. Matters are staffed across offices as a matter of routine, and no office maintains its own profit pool.
We have declined to merge four times. Independence lets us turn down work, decline conflicts we could technically accept, and keep the partnership small enough that every partner knows how the others practice.
Representative Matters
Described as candidly as confidentiality allows, including the parts that did not go to plan.
A sponsor-led secondary in which the conflicts process was settled before the transaction was announced rather than defended after it.
A departure that had to be announced, a covenant that had to be enforced, and a business that had to keep its clients through both.
A specialty materials division across nine countries, sold to a private capital buyer with sixty percent of its operations still running on the parent's systems.
In clients’ words
They told us not to bring a claim we very much wanted to bring, and explained why in one page. Two years later that advice had saved us more than every other piece of legal work we commissioned that year.
What I value is that the partner who scoped the matter was still on it at the end. That should not be remarkable and in my experience it is.
We came to them mid-investigation, having already made two of the mistakes they warn people about. They said so directly, then spent a weekend fixing what could still be fixed.
Insights
Not a newsletter and not marketing. Each piece is signed, dated, and narrow enough to be useful.
Dispute resolution
The dispute resolution clause is negotiated last, by people who assume it will never be read. Four drafting decisions determine whether that assumption costs anything.
Private funds
Sponsor-led secondaries are now routine, but the conflicts process around them is still assembled in the final fortnight. Investors have noticed.
Intellectual property
A single departing employee is a documents problem. A team is an organizational problem, and the first eleven days decide what can still be proved.
Offices
Opened 1961
The founding office, and still the center of the firm's transactional and disputes work.
+1 (212) 555-0142Opened 1979
Regulatory, investigations, and employment counsel, a short walk from the agencies that generate the work.
+1 (202) 555-0168Opened 1994
English-law capability for transactions and arbitration that will not stay in one jurisdiction.
+44 20 7946 0182Opened 2011
The firm's Asian base for arbitration, funds, and infrastructure investment.
+65 6555 0114Speak to the firm
Describe the matter in general terms and name the parties involved. We run a conflicts check, usually within two business days, and a partner in the relevant practice will call you. The first conversation is not charged.