We in Ireland are very unfashionable. We are the laughing stock of Europe because we use pencils to vote, the laughing stock of Europe because we might reject the Lisbon treaty and our Financial Regulation is a laughing stock.

Now, we risk being the laughing stock of Australia (and the UK in due course) because none of our lawyers have sold shares in themselves.

(Just to mention the topic is to expose us to derision.)

Have the lawyers not sold themselves already?�

These reactions are unfair because they are based on unfair comparisons. Consider Slater & Gordon the Australian law firm.

Despite the wording of their (its?) website their principal business is litigation for the recovery of compensation for personal injury. This is a form of business that the Government and the Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment in particular, have attempted to curtail at considerable loss to victims of personal injury as seen HERE and HERE and HERE.

The business that the government favours is the business of insurance. (Almost invariably the direction of the defence in personal injury litigation is given by an insurance company, in the name of the defendant.)

So, Slater & Gordon’s business model would not appeal to the investors in the Irish Stock Exchange.

So, what business model would work here in Ireland? Undoubtedly it will be the business model ultimately adopted in England and Wales. However, as noted HERE, there are growing potential and actual differences between the two jurisdictions which will probably ensure that our legal behemoths down the Liffey will not make it to the market.