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Established 1961
Independent by choice, and expensive to remain so.
Independence costs a firm the work that comes automatically through a network. What it buys is the ability to decline a matter, staff one properly, and give an answer that loses a fee.
Marlowe & Sterling was formed on a Tuesday in March 1961, when Edwin Marlowe and Beatrice Sterling — then eight years into practice at a large Manhattan firm, and seated at adjacent desks — resigned within an hour of each other. Neither had told the other in advance. They had both reached the same conclusion about the same client matter, which was that it had been handled to the firm's advantage rather than the client's.
They took two rooms above a printer's on Chancery Row and shared a telephone line for the first two years. The firm's founding proposition was narrow and has not changed: that a client is entitled to be told what its lawyer actually thinks, including when the answer is unwelcome and including when a shorter engagement is the better one.
Sixty-five years later the firm has two hundred and fourteen lawyers in New York, Washington, London, and Singapore. It has declined to merge on four occasions and has never joined a network, an alliance, or a verein. Independence is not a marketing position here; it is the reason the firm can turn down work, staff a matter with the people best suited to it rather than the people who need the hours, and give an answer that costs it a fee.
The founders are both long gone — Beatrice Sterling retired in 1989 and died in 2003; Edwin Marlowe practiced until 1994 — but the arrangement they insisted on survives. Every lawyer in the firm sits within one internal staircase of the partners they work with. Every partner still practices. And every engagement letter still contains the paragraph Sterling drafted in 1961, which sets out what the firm will do if it concludes the client should stop.
- Founded
- 1961
- Independent for sixty-five years, and never part of a network.
- Lawyers
- 214
- Across four offices, with matters routinely staffed between them.
- Offices
- 4
- New York, Washington, London, and Singapore.
- Cross-border matters
- 68%
- Proportion of engagements involving more than one jurisdiction.
How we practice
Four commitments, unchanged since 1961.
These are operating rules rather than values. Each one costs the firm something, which is how we know it is being followed.
Judgment before volume
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.
Answer the question
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.
One firm, one standard
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.
Independent by choice
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.
History
Sixty-five years, in the order they happened.
- 1961
Two rooms on Chancery Row
Edwin Marlowe and Beatrice Sterling resign from their firm on the same afternoon and open a practice above a printer's shop in lower Manhattan.
- 1974
The first cross-border matter
The firm advises a shipping client on a dispute governed by English law, and begins the practice — unusual at the time — of instructing local counsel jointly rather than sequentially.
- 1979
Washington opens
An energy client's reporting crisis leads to a two-lawyer office three blocks from the agency in question. It has never closed.
- 1989
Beatrice Sterling retires
Sterling steps back after twenty-eight years, leaving behind the engagement letter paragraph that still appears in every retainer the firm issues.
- 1994
London opens
After a decade of secondments across the Atlantic, the firm establishes an English-law practice near Fleet Street.
- 2003
The first declined merger
The partnership votes against a combination with a larger transatlantic firm. It has declined three further approaches since.
- 2011
Singapore opens
Wei-Lin Tan establishes the firm's Asian base, ending four years of running regional arbitrations from London.
- 2019
Helena Vosberg elected managing partner
Elected on the condition that she continue to practice, which she does.
- 2024
The investigations protocol published internally
The firm's standing procedure for privilege, preservation, and interviews is formalized and taught to every incoming associate.
Responsibility
Fifty hours, counted the same as any other fifty.
Every lawyer at the firm is expected to record at least fifty hours of pro bono work each year, and pro bono hours count identically to billable hours in every advancement decision.
- Two associates each year are seconded from the Washington office to legal services organizations for six-month terms at full salary.
- The firm maintains standing representation for three immigration and housing clinics, staffed on rotation rather than by volunteers.
- Partners are subject to the same fifty-hour expectation as associates, and the figure is reported to the partnership annually by name.
In clients’ words
Attributed by role, because privilege does not permit anything else.
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.
General CounselListed industrial manufacturer 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.
Chief Financial OfficerInfrastructure investment manager 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.
Chair of the Audit CommitteeFinancial services group
About this website
Marlowe & Sterling is a fictional law firm created for the HubZero Blueprint ecosystem. The firm, its lawyers, offices, clients, matters, and published material do not exist and describe no real organization, person, or place.
It exists to demonstrate the Legal architecture expressed through the Classic design language, and it is published by HubZero as a reference implementation.
Speak to the firm
Tell us what you are dealing with.
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.