The Gazette did not find its front page hard to fill this week, what with the Smedley report and Abbey’s bombshell for conveyancing firms. It is just possible, however, that the week’s most significant development in respect of legal business is the establishment of the world’s first stockmarket index for professional services firms (see news).

There are no law firms on the list – how could there be? Yet it was surely no coincidence that the index was launched in the swish Bishopsgate offices of Allen & Overy; though A&O was careful to stress that it has no plans to float or raise capital.

If financial institutions are to look at law firms and establish dedicated funds to invest in them, they need a lot more to go on than what’s in the LLP accounts. As one analyst said, professional services firms are people-centric and therefore very hard to assess – ultimately it doesn’t matter who works in Tesco or Sainsbury’s, but if half the people who work in a quoted law firm walk out it could ruin the business.

At present the professional services sector is invisible, largely because no one is tracking the constituent firms as a composite group. But the establishment of just such a tracking tool is an important first step in closing a ‘communications gap’ with the City, a gap that needs to be closed if law firms are to prove attractive investment prospects.