‘Twenty years ago, we set up in London as a financial services boutique.’ This comment from Katten London managing partner Christopher Hitchins (pictured) is perhaps self-deprecating – but it’s not far off.
The Chicago-headquartered firm first opened in London in 2005 via a combination with five-lawyer hedge fund boutique MW Cornish Solicitors. And while the City base started from solid foundations, in its early years, growth was modest.
However, the office has shifted gears in recent years, with turnover doubling over five years to reach £23.2m for the financial year ending 31 January 2025, driven by a strategic shift toward financial services, transactional work and closer alignment with the firm’s US platform.
Hitchins, who has led that shift after taking over leadership of the London base in January 2021, explains: ‘While we were successful in both servicing existing clients and developing strong relationships with UK-based clients in that area, we want to do the same across other practices too. And we believe there’s an opportunity to do so.’
The firm, which now has almost 50 lawyers in London, has also made a clutch of recent partner hires, bringing over Curtis Mallett investment management partners Ryan Hansen and Thomas Laurer and tax partner Daniel Lewin in March 2024, followed by intellectual property partner Nathan Smith, who joined from Dechert this January.
Now, Katten is ready to take its London office to the next phase.
Much of the London office’s more recent success can be traced back to summer 2023, when Hitchins began working with Chris DiAngelo, who had spent a decade as Katten’s New York managing partner from 2013 to 2023.
‘The aim was both to get a sense of what London was trying to do and the ambitions of the London partners, and to match that with what the firm was trying to do more broadly.’
‘We wanted to reach a consensus on our understanding of what the opportunity was for our firm in London, and the ambitions of the London partners, and to match that with what the firm was trying to do more broadly’, says Hitchins.
Hitchins and DiAngelo consulted with partners in London and senior US partners with client links to London, and presented their findings to the firm’s executive committee in 2024. ‘The results of that meeting were very positive, for both London and the wider firm’, says Hitchins. ‘First, we reiterated a strong commitment to be in London, in particular in the core markets that we see as our signature strengths in the US, primarily finance and financial services, and related practices including corporate, private equity, M&A, and litigation.
‘And second, a commitment to double down on the strengths that we have in financial services in London, and to try to replicate our success there across practices where the firm has an international client base and need.’
To achieve this, the firm set about making operational improvements to its London office. Hitchins explains: ‘We decided that we needed to integrate the London lawyers into the firm’s structures. Before then, the financial services group had been fully integrated, but the other groups less so.’
Katten is organised around practice groups, with lawyers working between offices to coordinate activities. The reforms saw the firm’s lawyers in London brought into this firmwide practice group structure.
Hitchins continues: ‘We identified lawyers in key practice groups and gathered them into a London development team, which has morphed, as of May this year, into a UK LLP management board.’
As well as six UK partners, that board includes five partners from the US, according to filings on Companies House. Alongside DiAngelo sits Wendy Cohen, a financial market and funds partner who succeeded DiAngelo as New York managing partner in 2023, as well as global insolvency and restructuring practice chair Steven Reisman, also in New York.
Rounding out the board on the US side are Mark Grossman, Chicago-based business transactions head and Legal 500 Hall of Famer for midmarket M&A, and Seth Messner, a structured finance and securitisation partner who took over as DC managing partner in 2025.
‘The board is a conduit between the executive committee and London’, says Hitchins. ‘Its role includes ensuring that more business is driven to London through global client teams, that talent is nurtured and managed by the practice groups, and therefore that we can offer career progression to our people in the same way as we do in the States, and that we’re all synced up on lateral hiring in accordance with a practice group’s strategic goals – and that if there’s a perceived opportunity to make a lateral hire at office-level based on complementary practices and client base, we can feed that back to the practice groups and synchronize from there.’
Hitchins chairs the UK management board and feeds its discussions back to both the non-board London partners and to firm CEO Noah Heller, who he meets with every two weeks. ‘The shift has been towards synchronization’, he says. ‘We know how the firm thinks, how the partnership thinks, how the leadership thinks. We know what success looks like. We’re much more plugged into it now, as we’re part of these conversations, hearing from the CEO, from the board, and from the practice group leaders.’
Looking ahead, Hitchins aims to deepen those connections – to further integrate the London office, and to generate opportunities both locally and for the wider firm.
Hitchins notes success on the latter point: ‘We’ve increased the amount of work that we export to our US offices. That primarily comes from our financial services group. It’s been very healthy for us to show that we can generate work for the US.’
Those connections also enable Hitchins to better promote London within the firm: ‘We see London as a gateway for international opportunities. And the words ‘gateway’ or ‘international opportunities’ spark discussions that may not have happened if you weren’t in the room.’
Hitchins’ vision of those opportunities is not to transform what the firm is, but to bring London into line with the firm’s success elsewhere.
‘We’re not looking for global domination’, he says. ‘We’re comfortable in who we are. We’re looking for ways to improve our service to our clients, and in particular to provide services that they need, that they may be buying elsewhere, and that right now they may not appreciate that we can offer.’
During the last four weeks of South Asian Heritage Month, which began in 2020, the same year that Hussain joined Addleshaws, Hussain has seen her colleagues enjoy Bhangra dancing, traditional henna art and South Asian cuisine; things her younger self could have scarcely believed possible in a corporate law firm.
