A small firm by design.
A long memory by choice.
Founded in 1962 in a single floor on Wall Street, the firm has grown deliberately. Today, twenty-eight partners and forty associates serve clients in nine jurisdictions — without ever exceeding the number of lawyers we can fit around one table.
Three
generations
of practice.
A short account of how the firm came to be, and the principles that have not changed since.
Howard Sterling and Marcus Voss leave white-shoe practice to open a four-lawyer firm with a single principle: the lawyer who answers the phone is the lawyer who tries the case. Their first client is a third-generation textile mill facing dissolution. They win.
Sterling & Voss represents the lead investors in the leveraged buyout boom that defines the decade. The firm doubles in size — twice — and resists the third doubling, choosing instead to hold the line at twenty partners.
Eleanor Sterling, Howard’s daughter, becomes the firm’s first female founding partner-equivalent and head of litigation. The London office opens the same year. The Singapore office follows in 2011.
The firm celebrates its sixty-fourth anniversary with the same letterhead, the same restraint on growth, and many of the same client families it began with. New work in private capital, intellectual property, and quiet diplomacy.
Four standards of practice.
Confidentiality first.
A great deal of our work is never spoken of, and we prefer it that way. Every engagement is staffed under privilege from the moment of intake.
Independence of advice.
We have refused matters that compromise our judgment. Most clients have been told something they did not want to hear; most have been grateful for it.
Continuity of counsel.
Forty-one of our active client relationships predate the year 2000. The same partner is on the matter from the first call through the final filing.
Discretion as a discipline.
We do not chase headlines. Many of the matters we are proudest of will never appear in any case report, professional ranking, or public document.
A complete directory.
Twenty-eight partners. Forty associates. Three offices.
Eleanor R. Sterling
Founding Partner · Litigation
Theodore K. Voss
Managing Partner · Corporate
Adaeze N. Okonkwo
Partner · Private Wealth
Marcus J. Beaumont
Partner · Intellectual Property
Yuki Tanaka
Partner · Tax
Sebastian Holm
Partner · Real Estate
Catherine Liang
Senior Counsel · M&A
David Mensah
Senior Counsel · Estates
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