BC Business
The recent introduction of new Top Level Domain (or TLD, the part of a web address to the right of the dot) options offers lawyers and law firms opportunities to enhance their online brand identities by creating relevant, memorable web and email addresses. The .LAWYER and .ATTORNEY web domains help legal professionals stand out and attract clients in a highly competitive marketplace.
Until relatively recently, print directories were the main method people used to locate and choose from among the estimated 90,000 lawyers practicing in Canada. The print directories have largely been supplanted by the Internet, of course, but with the continued segmentation of legal services and growing emphasis on specialization, legal professionals are finding it more important than ever to stand out from the crowd. But what to do if the URL that best describes your practice is taken? That’s where new TLDs come in.
The launch of .LAWYER and .ATTORNEY signifies an evolution of the Internet that is helping legal professionals move beyond the limitations posed by the scarcity of web domain options available with legacy extensions such as .COM. Instead of relying on long, hard-to-remember web addresses, the legal community can connect with clients and prospects using their ideal web and email address, transforming unwieldy domains like vancouverattythomasjones.com to the more memorable thomas jones.attorney.
Consider: beyond displaying your name or that of your business, .ATTORNEY and .LAWYER can denote geographic markets, audiences and practice areas. For example: vancouver.lawyer, family.lawyer or patent.attorney. These new domains offer the simplest, most relevant and most cost-effective way to improve visibility with new and existing clients at every point of contact–through online and offline ads, web and search traffic, signage, emails and business cards. “As an intellectual property and technology lawyer, much of the work I do is electronic, and many of my clients find me online,” says Chris Bennett, Head of Davis’ IT Law Group and Trade-marks Law Group. “Having a personalized domain name (chrisbennett.lawyer) helps me direct traffic to my website because it’s easy to remember and find.”
Not surprisingly, the legal profession is responding with enthusiasm: over 15,000 web addresses have been registered on the new domains to date. There’s just one caveat: if you intend to offer or promote legal services via a website with an address that ends in either of these new TLDs, you’ll be required to document your legal credentials.
Getting a new web or email address ending in .LAWYER or .ATTORNEY is now a simple process, one that is connecting legal professionals with relevant, memorable domains for themselves and their practices areas. For example: vancouver.lawyer; family.lawyer; patent.attorney, and so on.
With .ATTORNEY or .LAWYER website domain names and email addresses, legal professionals send a clear message to existing and potential clients that they mean business–whether it’s trial or patent, intellectual property, tax or family law and everything in between.
To find more information and to save 20% on .ATTORNEY and .LAWYER domain names, visit www.webnames.ca and use promo code ‘WEBNAMES20’.