We study when CEOs with legal expertise are valuable for firms. In general, lawyer CEOs are negatively associated with frequency and severity in employment civil rights, contract, labor, personal injury, and securities litigation. This effect is partly induced by the CEO’s management of litigation risk and reduction in other risky policies. Lawyer CEOs are further associated with an increase in gatekeepers providing additional legal oversight and a decrease in innovative activities with high litigation risk. Lawyer CEOs are more valuable during periods of enhanced compliance requirements and regulatory pressure and in industries with high litigation risk or better growth opportunities.

We analyze online stock posts to identify dynamic intercity investment preferences among Chinese investors. By inferring city connections using recent posts on local stocks mentioning other cities, we find that firms in highly connected cities exhibit higher stock valuations, greater turnover, higher idiosyncratic volatility, improved liquidity, and reduced crash risk. The network effects are more pronounced among less visible firms and induce intercity return comovement. Better stock performances in connected cities predict subsequent local stock return reversals as well as elevated intercity retail block trading. Our findings suggest that city connectivity, revealed through social media content, influences firm outcomes, investor behavior, and market efficiency.