Margaret Sterling
Co-Founder and Managing Partner. Fifteen years of mergers, financings, and fractional general counsel for Texas-based small businesses and venture-backed founders.
Margaret Sterling
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Biography
Margaret began her career at Vinson & Elkins in Houston, where she spent six years on the firm's M&A team representing private equity sponsors and Fortune 500 acquirers in middle-market transactions. The work was demanding and the lawyering was excellent — but the clients she found most interesting were the small companies on the other side of the table, the ones being acquired, who often arrived underrepresented.
In 2011 she relocated to Austin and co-founded Sterling & Hayes Legal with a specific mission: bring V&E-grade transactional craft to the founders, family businesses, and emerging-growth companies that drive the Texas economy but cannot justify a Big Law engagement letter. Fourteen years later, she has led more than three hundred buy-side and sell-side deals for Austin-headquartered businesses across SaaS, professional services, hospitality, logistics, and consumer products.
Margaret also serves as fractional general counsel for a roster of Series A through Series C technology companies, sitting in on board meetings, drafting commercial agreements, and handling the ten-different-things-a-week that an in-house GC would otherwise handle. Her clients describe her as the lawyer who tells them the answer before they finish the question.
Outside the firm she chairs the legal advisory committee of an East Austin coalition for minority-owned small businesses, mentors first-generation law students at UT Austin, and — by treaty with her two children — keeps Sunday mornings inviolate.
Representative Matters
- Led a $42M sell-side transaction for an Austin-based managed services provider, structuring an earn-out and rollover equity for the two founders.
- Acted as fractional general counsel through Series A and B financings for a Central Texas SaaS company, negotiating term sheets, restated charter, and investor agreements totaling $28M raised.
- Led a $25M asset acquisition for an Austin-based logistics company expanding into Houston and San Antonio markets, including coordinated multi-jurisdiction licensing.
- Restructured a 40-year-old family-owned hospitality group into a holding company with operating subsidiaries to facilitate generational ownership transition.
- Negotiated a strategic joint venture between a Texas consumer products brand and a Mexico City distributor, including IP licensing and cross-border tax structuring.
Speaking & Publications
- Panelist, "Selling Your Texas Business: A Founder's Field Guide," Texas State Bar Business Law Section Annual Meeting, 2024.
- Author, "The Five Reps and Warranties Founders Miss in Letter of Intent Stage," Texas Lawyer Magazine, 2023.
- Guest lecturer, "M&A for Closely Held Businesses," UT Austin School of Law, 2022 and 2024.
- Quoted contributor, Austin Business Journal coverage of Texas M&A activity, 2021–2024.
Memberships & Honors
- State Bar of Texas — Business Law Section, Mergers & Acquisitions Committee
- New York State Bar Association
- Austin Bar Association — Past Chair, Corporate Counsel Section
- Texas Super Lawyers, M&A and Business, 2019–2025
- Best Lawyers in America — Corporate Law (Austin), 2022–2025
- Austin Business Journal "Best of the Bar" honoree, 2023
Considering a sale, financing, or fractional GC engagement?
Margaret takes a small number of new transactional and fractional GC engagements each quarter. Reach out early to discuss timing and fit.