About Sterling & Associates

Catherine Sterling

Catherine Sterling founded the firm and leads the commercial practice. She has practised commercial law in Melbourne for twenty-five years, the majority of that time advising privately held companies on transactions, governance, and the contractual architecture that underpins long-term business relationships. Her day-to-day work involves drafting and negotiating share sale agreements, shareholder arrangements, joint venture documentation, and complex commercial contracts. She acts as ongoing external counsel to several Melbourne businesses, attending board meetings by invitation and advising directors on their obligations under the Corporations Act. Catherine approaches commercial work with the discipline of a litigator: every document is drafted with the assumption that it will one day be read by a judge.

David Nguyen

David Nguyen leads the firm's litigation and dispute resolution practice. He appears regularly in the Supreme Court of Victoria, including the Commercial Court division, the Federal Court of Australia, and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. His practice covers shareholder oppression proceedings, contractual disputes, restraint of trade claims, and regulatory matters. He has conducted contested interlocutory hearings, multi-week commercial trials, and formal mediations under the Supreme Court's mediation program. David advises clients with a clear-eyed assessment of costs and prospects, and he will recommend settlement where the commercial outcome favours it. Where it does not, he prepares cases for hearing with the thoroughness that contested litigation demands.

Rebecca Thornton

Rebecca Thornton leads the intellectual property practice and brings to it a dual background in law and engineering. She handles patent prosecution through IP Australia, trademark registration and portfolio management, trade secret protection programs, and IP licensing for technology and creative industry clients. What distinguishes her practice is the ability to engage directly with technical subject matter: she reads patent specifications, evaluates prior art, and works with inventors on claim drafting without requiring an intermediary. She advises technology companies on IP strategy from incorporation through to exit, covering founder assignments, freedom-to-operate analyses, open-source compliance, and defensive patenting. For clients facing infringement, she works with the litigation team to pursue enforcement through the Federal Court.

Sterling & Associates is structured deliberately. Three partners, no associates, no support staff beyond a practice manager and a paralegal. This is not a firm that grew and then tried to maintain quality. It is a firm that chose its size in order to guarantee it. Every matter is led by a partner. Every piece of advice is reviewed by the person whose name is on the engagement letter. The firm does not delegate substantive legal work to junior lawyers, because there are none. The constraint is intentional: it limits the volume of matters the firm can accept, but it means that clients receive the direct and undivided attention of experienced practitioners on every instruction.