Description:
This study aims to determine whether the involvement of prestigious attorneys in issuing companies afects withdrawals in the initial public ofering (IPO) market. There is little evidence on how the involvement of famous lawyers afects IPO withdrawal. The study considers a large dataset consisting of 24,312 IPOs that were either successful or withdrawn from 22 distinct IPO marketplaces between January 1995 and December 2019. We fnd that IPO issuers may beneft from engaging with reputed attorneys by leveraging exceptional legal or negotiating abilities as quality certifcation signals to reduce IPO investors' ex-ante uncertainty. Here, the objective is to protect their IPOs from withdrawal of at least by 22%. Multiple robustness tests validate the reliability of the results of this study. These fndings have signifcant implications for researchers, legislators, investors, and issuers.