Michael Oatham

Profile:

Michael is a Partner and Head of our Commercial Litigation team.

He has more than 25 years’ legal experience and joined Brachers in 1998, after starting his career in banking and asset finance in the City. He has been a Partner since 2004.

Michael is ranked in the Chambers UK 2026 legal directory for Litigation in the South of England. He was named as a ‘Recommended Lawyer’ in the Legal 500 2025 directory.

He is part of the Collections and Recoveries team which  won ‘Legal Firm of the Year’ at the Credit & Collections Industry Awards 2024 and were also finalists for the ‘Consumer Collections Team of the Year’. The team were also finalists for the ‘Vulnerable Customer Identification & Screening Solution’ and ‘Compliance & Regulatory Technology Solution’ categories at the Credit & Collections Technology Awards 2024. His team also won a Credit Excellence Award 2020 for its debt recovery work.

In recent years he also developed a new debt recovery product in partnership with an international debt collection agency which yielded outstanding results for its clients.

Michael specialises in:

• Commercial contract disputes
• Corporate risk analysis and advice
• Shareholders’ rights and remedies
• Partnership and LLP disputes
• Corporate insolvency and asset recovery
• Intellectual property disputes
• Alternative dispute resolution
• Engineering disputes
• Supporting NHS Trusts and local authorities.

Renowned for his tenacity, Michael is highly regarded for keeping his clients’ wider objectives in mind; a culture which is embraced throughout his team.

Michael is based in our Maidstone office.

• Michael Oatham is very user friendly, pragmatic and practical in his advice

  Legal 500 2025

• He handles a wide range of commercial disputes as well as insolvency litigation. A source describes him as “always on the ball” and adds: “He knows his stuff, knows the law and is good to deal with”.

  Chambers & Partners

• Mike Oatham; good commercial nous.

  Legal 500 2025

• Michael works cooperatively and is experienced.

  Chambers & Partners 2024

• I wanted to thank you personally for everything. Both professionally and personally I honestly don’t know how we would have got through this without you and Brachers, my words of thanks won’t really cover the gratitude my wife and I have for you.

  Client quote

• Measured and reasonable.

  Client quote

• Fantastic at dealing with difficult situations and thinking creatively.

  Chambers & Partners