Fried Frank promotes first City lawyer in four years

Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson has promoted its first City lawyer to partner in four years.

Corporate lawyer David Christmas will become a partner in the firm’s asset management group, having joined Fried Frank as a senior associate in 2015.

Christmas, who trained at Berwin Leighton Paisner, is one of eight global promotions this year and is the first London addition since 2014.

In 2014, Fried Frank made up two City lawyers to partner; competition expert Tobias Caspary and corporate specialist Jons Lehmann. However, there have been no London promotions since, with three consecutive all-US appointments.

The remaining seven promotions this year all hail from Fried Frank’s New York and Washington DC offices. The firm has just two offices outside the US in London and Frankfurt, after the closure of its Hong Kong and Shanghai operations in 2015.

Globally, there were two promotions in asset management, while tax, capital markets, IP, real estate, M&A and finance all saw one new joiner each.

There was one female promotion this year at Fried Frank, with Lee Barnum joining the capital markets group in New York. In the last five rounds, the firm has promoted eight women to partner out of 35, equivalent to 23 per cent.

Christmas moved over to Fried from Kirkland & Ellis following the exits of funds partners Mark Mifsud, Kate Downey and Alexandra Conroy to Fried Frank.

Mifsud was named head of Fried Frank’s London office last year.