Another Reason To Be Careful With Your Law Firm URL

I have previously mentioned my belief that law firms should take care about who owns the URL for the firm's website (or sites), and what happens to the URL in the event that the firm name changes or a partner leaves the firm. But here's another wrinkle.

Let's say you have been using a URL for a number of years, or even just a few months, and have advertised it, incuded it on your letterhead and business cards, or otherwise publicized the URL. The firm decides to change the URL for the website, a partner who owns the URL's registration leaves the firm, or the hosting company never transfers the URL to your firm and either goes out of business or won't release the URL to you when you switch hosts.

Within a short amount of time, you may find that all of that promotional material which continues to associate your firm's name with the defunct URL now points to a site owned by a competitor or, much more likely in the event that you had any appreciable traffic, a company which will "park" the domain and serve up ads to anybody who comes to it. If you're really unlucky it may end up owned by somebody who hates your firm and puts up a website describing how awful you are.

Go to a site such as domaintools.com and see... who does own your URL, and is it time for you to renew your registration?