The claim that lawyers act as gatekeepers or certifiers in financial transactions is widely discussed in the legal literature. There has, however, been little empirical examination of the claim. In this article, we test the hypothesis that law firms have replaced investment banks as the...

The claim that lawyers act as gatekeepers or certifiers in financial transactions is widely discussed in the legal literature. There has, however, been little empirical examination of the claim. We test the hypothesis that law firms have replaced investment banks as the gatekeepers of the market...

In this article we examine the relations between risk, the choice of foreign or local contract terms (parameters) and maturity in the sovereign debt market. Our primary finding is that the maturities of bonds that carry a meaningful degree of risk (rating BBB+ and below, which we label Lower...