Catherine Vincent obtained her first degree in law from the University of Paris-X Nanterre. She studied for her LLM at the University of Texas Birmingham Law School in Austin. Between 1995 and 1998 she worked in the legal departments of two French leading companies in Paris as an in-house lawyer. She then completed a Magister des deutschen Rechts from the University of Saarland in Saarbrücken in 2000.