He attended Christ's College, Finchley, a grammar school, and after having served in the army as a 2nd Lieutenant from 1946 to 1948, he qualified as a solicitor in 1952 and started his own practice, D J Freeman.
[3] 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 DTI inquiry in 1970.
He was a trustee of Ravenswood (now Norwood) Children's Home, a governor of Carmel College, he sat on the defence committee of the Jewish Board of Deputies in the 1960s, and was a founder member of JACOB (now the Community Security Trust).
In 2005–2006, he was chairman of "An Inquiry into the Provenance of 654 Aramaic incantation bowls" for University College, London (UCL).
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 UCL."