Cravath Swaine & Moore's 89 partners have elected the firm's first female presiding partner, Faiza Saeed, to succeed C Allen Parker, according to a person close to the firm.

Saeed, the firm's M&A co-head, was named one of the best women lawyers under 45 in a 2011 issue of The American Lawyer highlighting a new generation of female rainmakers.

Saeed did not respond to an emailed request for comment at press time, but Parker confirmed the news late Wednesday evening.

Clients Saeed has advised include Time Warner in numerous matters, including an unsolicited proposal from 21st Century Fox (later withdrawn); its defence against Carl Icahn; its divestiture of Time Warner Telecom; and its merger with AOL.

She also advised Precision Castparts in its $37bn (£28bn) acquisition by Berkshire Hathaway; DreamWorks Animation in its pending $4.1bn (£3bn) acquisition by Comcast, as well as the formation of Oriental DreamWorks, a joint venture with China Media Capital and Shanghai Media; and its spin-off IPO from DreamWorks.

Parker, who is 62, will serve out the rest of his first term, which began on 1 January 2013. Parker has been a full-time manager but he previously practiced as a finance partner. He succeeded Evan Chesler, a top litigator.

At a time when firms are mostly choosing to go global and many of its Wall Street rivals number well over 1,000 lawyers, Cravath has chosen to remain relatively small.

Though only a few dozen of its 472 lawyers work outside of its New York headquarters in a small London outpost, the firm has managed to hold onto its position near the top of the M&A league tables. Last year, the firm advised on a record-breaking $927bn (£700bn) in deals, but revenue rose only modestly, by 2.9%, to $666.5m (£503m), according to American Lawyer reporting. Profit per partner surged 5.6% to $3.56m (£2.69m).

But on 3 April, the lawyer at the centre of many of those deals, Scott Barshay, left for Paul, Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison.

Barshay's departure triggered speculation that the pure lockstep firm would have to make changes to hold onto its biggest business generators. Paul Weiss, with a flexible lockstep model including a significant bonus pool, is able to pay its top partners as much as double the $4m (£3m) top partners are reported to get at Cravath.