Law-centric TLDs May Have Many Registrants, Including Among Communications Law Firms
The growing cadre of law-related top-level domains has the potential to drive significant growth in domain name registrations, some of which may come from communications practices, executives and lawyers said in interviews. How big demand is will depend on how much law firms and related entities embrace the new TLDs as a way of rebranding themselves, they said. Minds + Machines, the registry operator for .law and Spanish equivalent .abogado, began the 60-day sunrise period for offering .law domain names to Trademark Clearinghouse-registered law firms July 30. General availability is to begin Oct. 12. The .law TLD follows the .lawyer and .attorney TLDs, which Rightside began offering in 2014.
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All law-related TLDs have “the potential to become a valuable area of the Internet,” though their popularity with law firms and other law-related entities isn’t entirely clear, said Domain Name Association Executive Director Kurt Pritz. “The market will decide how useful they are.” Law-related domains “offer great advantages in branding and short, memorable names” that the legal profession can use to its advantage, Pritz said. The TLDs can also be used to more effectively link specific legal practices like telecom law to a law firm, he said. Both Minds + Machines and Rightside offer practice-specific domain names using the .law, .lawyer and .attorney TLDs.
Minds + Machines believes it can reach 10 percent market penetration in the U.S. over the next two years, potentially selling about 100,000 .law domain names. Several law firms with robust practices in communications and Internet indicated they're exploring buying .law domain names to complement their existing .com presence, though the firms we contacted declined to comment further because they haven’t finalized their plans. At least half of the top 50 U.S. law firms have already contacted Minds + Machines to preregister or seek further information, said .law CEO Lou Andreozzi, former Bloomberg Law chairman. Minds + Machines touted early adoption of .law by top law firms DLA Piper and Skadden in early August.
The .law TLD is likely to be particularly appealing to law firms that began building their online presence in the 1990s using a .com domain name, since those firms had no guarantee then that they’d be able to get their desired name, Andreozzi said. Many firms “were behind the curve,” so they often had to settle with less optimal names, he said. “Now these firms can rebrand themselves around the names they want, and they can make them simple.” It’s unclear whether participating law firms will use .law domain names as a primary address or as a way of redirecting to an existing .com domain, Andreozzi said.
The .lawyer and .attorney domains have sold “as well as we expected” since Rightside began offering them last year, said Vice President-Business and Legal Affairs Statton Hammock. More than 21,000 .lawyer and .attorney domain names registered since last August, while Donuts-owned .legal has more than 5,000 registered domain names. Google is the owner of the .esq TLD but hasn’t set a timeline for offering domain names using the TLD. The legal profession is “a huge addressable market, and a lot of the TLDs that Rightside acquired are in specific verticals” that similarly deal with large addressable markets catering to specific professions like dentists and engineers, Hammock said. “There are many aspects of law, so there are a lot of potential customers who can benefit from a relevant TLD like .lawyer. With that large and addressable market, we’re optimistic of the success of all legal-related TLDs.”
Minds + Machines is restricting .law registrations to verified law firms, which will make it appealing because it provides additional assurance to consumers that they’re using the website of a legitimate law firm, Andreozzi said. The .law TLD fits in with traditional three-letter TLDs like .com and .gov and is internationally recognized as a designation for the legal profession, he said. Requiring verification could be used as a way to build consumer trust, Pritz said. The .lawyer and .attorney TLDs will be appealing for specific lawyers within a law firm since they can use those domains to develop their personal brand, Hammock said. Those domains also wouldn’t be tied to a specific law firm, which can be useful in the “very transient” legal industry since lawyers are likely to switch jobs multiple times over the course of their careers, Hammock said. “The challenge is if you’re moving around, how do you tell people where to find you?”