According to a story in the abajournal.com, the .Law registry which is owned by Minds + Machines expects to sell 100,000 domain names in 12-24 months after launching .
.Law will only be opened to licensed lawyers.
The CEO of .Law Lou Andreozzi, of LexisNexis North American Legal Markets and the former chairman of Bloomberg Law is quoted as saying he “estimates the U.S. market is about 1.2 million attorneys, while the worldwide market approaches 2 million lawyers. Andreozzi said his goal in the next 12 to 24 months is to reach 10 percent market penetration, or roughly 100,000 .law sales.
“The .law extension is the first major change to attorneys’ Internet handles since the beginning of the dot-com era. Attorneys who did not get the .com name they wanted because it might have already been taken have a new opportunity at Internet branding with the .law suffix. Andreozzi claims that adoption of the .law suffix will mean enhanced credibility for subscribers, because only credentialed lawyers can receive .law addresses, whereas anyone can apply for a .com address.”
Andreozzi said the .law extension “creates a vertical community where you know that the person is actually an attorney. Some people will buy them offensively such as, for example, miamidivorce.law, while those with distinguished brands will buy them defensively so someone else doesn’t get the name.”
The standard annual renewal fee for a .law domain will be $200 and a $10 verification fee, says Andreozzi. The renewal fees for premium domain names and “certain super-premium names” have not yet been determined.”
The article goes on to say:
“The .law domain is not the only law-related domain suffix which will soon be offered…Other domains that will be coming available include .attorney, .esq and .lawyer”
Of course back in domain world we know that .Lawyer and .Attorney launched many months ago as well as .Legal which the story didn’t even mention.
.Lawyer has almost 13,000 registration and .Attorney has just about 8,500 registrations.
Both .Lawyer and .Attorney are owned by Rightside (NAME).
The registration price for a non-premium .Attorney or .Lawyer domain name is $35 at Enom.com and Name.com which is also owned by Rightside.
.Legal which has also launched, has about 4,800 registered domain names with a non-premium registration price of $60.
.Esq is owned by Google and was delegated in August, 2014 is “intended for lawyers, law practices, and verified legal professionals” has not launched and there is no pricing set.
So what do you think?
Obviously every lawyer is the world could have registered a .Lawyer, .Attorney or .Legal domain but so could anyone else including those looking to built our directory sites, as well as those in law school or waiting to pass the Bar Exam who wants to lock up their domain now and of course domain investors who have registered .Law, .Attorney or .Legal domains hoping to resell them for a profit and there are approximately 26,000 domain registered in the three extensions.
Is 100,000 registrations in 12-24 months a viable goal?
That’s a chilling thought. Not the domains. But hearing that we’re surrounded by 1.2 million lawyers? Out of 50 states, 12 of them have populations of 1.2 million or less.
So if we swept all the lawyers together into a pile, they might constitute the 38th most populous state in the Union, in and of themselves.
Where’s the dust bin?
This is just a remake of the .pro flop.
Example:
http://archive.icann.org/en/tlds/pro2/Registry%20Operators%20Proposal.htm#_Toc494977508
=> Skip to D13.2.4.
Compare predictions vs today’s reality.
Now replace the string .pro with .law and you can read the future.
Those who ignore the lessons from the past are doomed to repeat them.
I think the biggest problem here is the choice of too many extensions being avail for the legal profession: .law, attorney, esq, legal — and probably counsel, barrister, and more to follow.
.Law would be fine alone, if there would not be all these alternatives. I understand the reasoning. If you can’t get your desired _____.law, then try ____.attorney. But still could be confusing.
@Kate
I believe you may be right. .Pro originally was designed for vetted professional service providers. But it really has never gained much traction. I own a few premium .pro domains. But I keep them, more as give-away or add-ons for premium .coms I own.
Who has been right with their predictions on gtlds to date
This got me curious about the top attorney’s per capita in all countries. Top 8 below from a 2006 report. Not sure what present day numbers hold, however I heard a rumor that Greece has made it’s way to the top of the list.
1) US: Lawyers: 1,143,358 Pop: 303MM P/L:265
2) Brazil: Lawyers: 571,360 Pop: 186MM P/L: 326
3) New Zealand: Lawyers: 10,523 Pop: 4MM P/L 391
4) Spain Lawyers:114,143 Pop: 45MM P/L:395
5) Italy Lawyers:121,380 Pop: 59MM P/L:488
6) UK Lawyers:151,043 Pop: 61MM P/L401
7) Germany Lawyers:138,679 Pop: 82MM P/L: 593
8) France Lawyers:45,686 Pop: 64MM P/L: 1,403
That’s quite interesting, actually. Thanks.
Tom
Negari