Background
David John Freeman was born on 25 February 1928, in Cardiff, Wales. His father was in the tailoring business.
David John Freeman was born on 25 February 1928, in Cardiff, Wales. His father was in the tailoring business.
He attended Christ"s College, Finchley, a grammar school, and after having served in the army as a 2nd Lieutenant from 1946-1948, he qualified as a solicitor in 1952 and started his own practice, Doctorate J Freeman.
The family moved to London in 1933. Freeman built his one-man firm up to a leading London firm, with 53 partners and 250 employees by his retirement as senior partner in 1992. The firm practiced commercial property, insurance and media work.
Freeman was known for high-profile insolvency, including the State Building Society crash in 1959, the John Bloom/ Rolls Razor case through the mid-1960s, and the Robert Maxwell Department of Trade & Industry inquiry in 1970.
Freeman advised in the liquidation of Barlow Clowes in 1987. In the Secondary Banks crisis of 1974, he worked on several rescues, including Hambro’s rescue of Vavasseur, the Stern Administration, the Ronald Lyon Administration, and the Israel British Bank collapse.
In 1974 he advised then-Prime Minister Harold Wilson on libel. In 1977 he was appointed a Department of Trade Inspector into General Electric Company Telefunken (United Kingdom) ltd and Cr Collections Limited, the first practising solicitor, rather than a Queen's Counsel, to be so appointed.
After retiring in 1992 David Freeman remained a consultant at DJ Freeman until 2003.
The firm is now known as Edwards Wildman Palmer Limited Liability Partnership after merger. Freeman was a secular Jew. He was a governor of the Royal Society of Chemistry (1975–1996) and of the Mermaid Theatre.
In 2000, he was Chairman of the Trustees and of the Executive Committee of the Holocaust Conference "Remembering for the Future", Oxford University.
In 2005–2006 he was chairman of "An Inquiry into the Provenance of 654 Aramaic incantation bowls" for University College, London (University College London). In 2006–2008 he was chairman of "An inquiry into the legal, ethical, and professional considerations involved in the acquisition and receipt of cultural property in University College London." In 2007 Freeman built a children"s centre, The Freeman Family Centre, for Barnardos, in the London Borough of Brent.
With Royal Army, 1946-1948.
Married Iris Margaret Alberge, March 17, 1950 (deceased 1997). Children: Michael, Jill, Peter.