First off a plug, if you have an interest in the financial markets then MoneyWeek podcast is well worth a listen (link here or search your podcast app). But on their site today is a great post on law firm listings highlighting that while the access to capital is great for the firms, for the investor “At the very least, you should proceed only with due care and attention”.

It shouldn’t be news to most in the industry as it highlights the challenge we’ve heard for years and for the most part understand and have started to rise to the challenge :

First, the business model of the law firm has worked perfectly well for a long time, but it might be about to change. Law is one of the industries most vulnerable to the rise of artificial intelligence.

Matthew Lynn, MoneyWeek, 28/07/2019

But the second part is something I’ve only heard from a few commentators, the “superstar problem”. I posted about this a few years back as it seemed to mirror what was happening in the Premier League (Balotelli or Giggs? you can tell from the title how long ago!!).

I suspect inside the floated firms the capital has allowed investments that couldn’t have been done without the IPO, but from the investment side the article points out “The record of the firms that have listed so far is not very encouraging.”. Time will tell I guess.