The managing partner of Katten’s London office tells The Brief about a career that has taken in a number of US law firms and seen him move from corporate into employment practice.

Christopher Hitchins is London managing partner at the US law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman UK LLP. He is also an employment partner, working primarily for upper mid-market companies in sectors including financial services, retail and hospitality.

Chicago-headquartered Katten was founded in 1974 by, in Hitchins’ words, “entrepreneurial lawyers who wanted to practise law without all of the other things that came associated with big law.”

Over the intervening period the firm has grown to employ approximately 650 fee earners globally, the majority of whom are in the US, where Katten has eight offices. It also has bases in London and Shanghai.

Katten now has, Hitchins says, “all of the major practice groups you would associate with an international US-headquartered law firm: so, financial markets and funds, litigation, transactional work, M&A and IP, in a variety of sectors.”

The firm is particularly strong in financial services internationally.

Katten’s London office was opened 21 years ago, originally as an extension of the firm’s financial services practice, acting as a boutique servicing the hedge fund market.

Since then, however, it has developed a broad commercial offering aimed at domestic and international financial services institutions, investors and public and private companies.

Its transactional real estate and corporate work is focused around the upper mid-market, although it also acts on both relatively modest and very big-ticket deals. The office currently employs 43 fee earners.

From corporate to employment

Hitchins began his legal career at Slaughter and May, where he trained and qualified as a corporate lawyer. His time there included a secondment to the firm’s Hong Kong office, which gave him a taste for working in a smaller, more hands-on environment.

In 2000 he joined the corporate team at the London office of US firm Latham and Watkins. At that point the firm’s UK office had been established for ten years and Hitchins was its 32^nd lawyer – it now employs around 500.

“I liked the small office environment where you just rolled your sleeves up and got stuck into whatever the office was doing,” Hitchins says. “Latham had a growth plan, which they executed and succeeded with, and it felt like a good time to get involved and have some input as it was growing and evolving.”

I liked the small office environment where you just rolled your sleeves up and got stuck into whatever the office was doing

The firm worked largely for private equity investors who “invariably fell out” with one or more members of the management teams at the companies they acquired. “The individuals needed to be managed out and our clients wanted to know how to do that lawfully, and what the implications were,” he continues.

“Nobody at Latham in London was doing employment law at the time and I took an interest and put my hand up to do the work. Then, when I was about three or four years qualified, they asked if I wanted to do it full time, because they were going to hire an employment partner, and the choice was either for that partner to work with me or to recruit their own team.”

Hitchins chose to do it full time.

Learning through osmosis

Then, in 2008, he moved to another US firm, Morgan Lewis, which at the time had a higher profile “in labor and employment as they call it in the States”, and also offered a faster route to partnership. After four years there he moved to Lewis Silkin, “principally because I hadn’t trained as an employment lawyer and wanted to surround myself with other employment lawyers to learn through osmosis and fill in the gaps.”

During his four years at Lewis Silkin, which he “loved”, he worked with or for a number of US law firms as his clients, advising on deal work where they had no in-house employment law capability as well as HR work and advice related to partners who were joining them and were subject to restrictive covenants. One of those firms was Katten.

He says, “In the course of working with Katten’s London, Chicago and New York offices, and their clients, I got to know some of the senior stakeholders and had some very productive conversations with them about what they were building in London. I enjoyed meeting them and could see myself working with them, so I made the move.”

Hitchins joined Katten in 2015 and became London office managing partner in 2021.

Building out

Having worked at the London offices of a number of US firms, and for many others as clients, Hitchins says that, although no two are the same, they all share the need to compete with English international firms that have grown organically over perhaps a century or more, and which have strong existing client bases they can rely on for ongoing work.

To do this, he explains, “You either have to pack a team around a key client that you already work for in the States, and that you can work for here, or you identify a particular sector – financial services for example – and you bring in specialists in that area and look to cross-sell services to clients in that sector.

“Alternatively, you might want to buy in a practice that looks and feels the same in London as in the US, and where there’s a transatlantic crossover.”

I think there is a really good opportunity for firms of our size because we’re trying to take on market share by working with our existing colleagues in the US.

Because the kinds of lawyers required to grow a practice rapidly can be different, in terms of outlook, from their colleagues in established US offices, “it can make for an interesting dynamic.”

Hitchins says, “The culture in London might change depending on who’s in and who’s out and what stage you’re going through. It might also be different from what people are used to in the UK market because it might be very hands-on.

“It’s complicated because it’s not the same at each different firm, but you have to understand the firm in the US and focus on developing a London office that complements the firm’s strategy and helps it to execute that faster and better by having a complementary London office strategy – and it takes time to work that out.”

Katten’s strategy for its London office over the immediate future is not necessarily to add further practice areas but, rather, to grow by building out its current capabilities. Examples of this include recent hires in structured finance and restructuring – with plans to recruit further into these teams, as well as corporate.

Hitchins says, “I think there is a really good opportunity for firms of our size because we’re trying to take on market share by working with our existing colleagues in the US, both in terms of clients that they or we have and a shared network to which we can market together, and from which we can also gain referrals.”

Practice structures

The London employment team consists of three fee-earners, plus a trainee who started in September. Hitchins leads this practice but, quite unusually, it is not structured as a standalone department in London.

Instead, Hitchins, and one of his employment colleagues sit within the office’s litigation team, and another is a member of the financial services team. “It’s a matter of how people fit within the firm’s architecture, more than anything else,” he says.

Hitchins spends the majority of his time on his employment practice, with the role of office managing partner, while requiring focus and having inevitable peaks and troughs, requiring less than half of his time.

The advantage we have in London is that we’re all in the same office, so we have the ability to put together a cross-practice-group, or indeed a whole-of-office, networking and marketing pitch.

He explains, “We have integrated our lawyers into their respective practice groups in the US. So, the management of lawyers, the mentoring, the sponsorship, and pay and promotion decisions are all done within the firm’s architecture.

“That gives us the benefits of scale and means there are now multiple people who are responsible for the lawyers in this office, not just the managing partner – although I obviously maintain a keen interest.

“So, it’s a question of the practice groups building out their international strategies by looking at what they need in London and going out and finding it. I then look at how I can help those lawyers build their practice in London, in particular through pulling together the London cross-practice group offering.”

Although lawyers might be integrated into practice groups internationally, Hitchins says they are very much not siloed. He explains, “The advantage we have in London is that we’re all in the same office, so we have the ability to put together a cross-practice-group, or indeed a whole-of-office, networking and marketing pitch.

“We can say we want to work for a particular client not just in one practice area but across, say, regulatory, finance and transactional matters. In the past things might have been more individualistic but we’ve moved away from that and are now asking how we can service clients’ needs in multiple areas.”

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