The .law Domain: Where the Licence Rule Sits in the Contract
.law entered the root zone on 18 June 2015 under an ICANN registry agreement dated 22 January 2015, and the contracting party today is Registry Services, LLC. The registry describes the extension in its own material as an address open only to accredited lawyers and law firms worldwide. The nTLDstats page accessed on 12 August 2026 shows 29,098 registrations, of which 23,867 sit in the zone file.
Advocates, law firms, consultancies and bar-affiliated bodies use the zone. What distinguishes this ending is that the professional restriction is not a marketing line but text written into the agreement itself. Try candidates through a .law domain search, and compare the unrestricted .lawyer page.
Specification 11 §4(l) of the agreement restricts registration to legal professionals appropriately licensed to practise law by a recognised accredited body or an authorised government authority: lawyers, barristers, solicitors, law firms and other practitioners. The operator reserves the right to suspend or delete registrations made contrary to that restriction, and the commitment is enforceable through ICANN's public interest commitment dispute process. The registry's own eligibility policy of 1 January 2022 repeats the condition for registration and renewal alike: a registrant who ceases to qualify must contact their registrar within fourteen calendar days, a receiving party in a transfer must meet the requirement independently, and the registry may ask for verification at any point in the name's lifecycle.
View required documents →
.LAW Domain at a Glance
- Sponsoring organisation Registry Services, LLC
- ICANN registry agreement 22 January 2015
- Root zone record 18 June 2015
- Eligibility requirement Yes; restricted to licensed legal professionals
- Registered domains 29,098 (nTLDstats, 12 August 2026)
- Present in the zone file 23,867 names, about 82%
- Document Requirement View required documents
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.law Domain Prices — No Surprise Fees
Registration, transfer and renewal fees are listed separately. The renewal price can differ from the first-year price, so you see both up front.
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New Registration
$114.90 /year -
Transfer
$110.01 /year -
Renewal
$121.01 /year -
Restore
$292.50 -
Late Renewal
$24.20
Included With Every .law Domain
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Free DNS management
Change A, MX, TXT and CNAME records yourself from the panel — no waiting on anyone when you move a site or mailbox.
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Domain lock
While the lock is on, nobody can move your domain to another registrar without your approval.
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Domain forwarding
Point the domain at your existing site, a campaign page or a social profile — at no extra cost.
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Free WHOIS privacy
Your name, address and phone stay out of public WHOIS records, which cuts down spam and scam calls.
.law Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .law domain is put on Client Hold on its expiry date, so the site and e-mail stop that same day. You can still renew during the first 20 days, but from this point a late renewal fee is added on top of the renewal price. On day 20 the registration is deleted and until day 50 only a paid restore brings it back. Nothing at all can be done in the 5 days that follow, and on day 55 the name is open to anyone. There is exactly one way never to enter this chain: keep auto-renewal on.
Domain Is Available (Available)
A .law address at this stage has not been taken yet, and it goes to whoever registers first. Check the name you have in mind — if it is free, it can be yours within minutes.
Domain Is Active (Active Period)
Once registration is complete, the domain is registered to you for the term you selected. You can renew at any point before it expires to keep it active, or switch on auto-renewal so you never have to watch the date.
Renewal Window (Client Hold)
On its expiry date your .law domain is put on Client Hold: the site and e-mail go down that day, but the registration is still yours. A single renewal within these first 20 days brings everything back exactly as it was — nothing is lost. The only difference is that a $24.20 late renewal fee is now added to the renewal price; renewing before the expiry date avoids that fee entirely.
Redemption Period (Redemption / RGP)
On day 20 the registration is deleted and the 30-day redemption period that ICANN requires of every gTLD registry begins. The name is not released to anyone during this time; only you can take it back, by paying the restore fee, until day 50. That fee is far higher than a renewal — renewing on time is always the cheaper route.
Pending Delete (Pending Delete)
Once the redemption window closes too, the domain enters its final 5 days and there is no way back. Neither renewal nor restore works here; nobody — your registrar included — can return the name to you. The registry uses this window as the last hold before the name goes back into the pool.
Open to Anyone Again (Released)
On day 55 the name .law returns to the pool and anyone can register it. Sought-after names are often gone within seconds, and there is no guaranteed way to get one back. Yet staying out of this timeline is entirely in your hands: leave auto-renewal on and the expiry date will never catch you off guard.
The timeline above is the schedule Atak Domain applies and publishes. The ICANN chart you will find elsewhere shows a renewal window of up to 45 days after expiry; ICANN's policy on expired registrations (section 2.2.1) lets registrars delete an expired domain at any time, provided they disclose their policy in advance. We apply that window as 20 days and publish it here in plain sight. Full text of the policy: ICANN Expired Registration Recovery Policy
.law Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.law Domain Registration
- Document Requirement View required documents
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.law Domain Support
- IDN Support Yes
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Documents Required for a .law Domain
In order to be eligible to register (and continue to be a registrant of) a .LAW domain name, the registrant must be a Qualified Lawyer. Qualified Lawyer is a professional who is licensed to practice law by an approved regulator of legal services in a given jurisdiction. A Qualified Lawyer must be identifiable as a currently licensed practitioner in the public records kept by the relevant approved regulator. Once your domain name has been requested, we will send you an email asking for further information: name of the Regulator, date of registration with the Regulator, reference number, and jurisdiction.
.LAW Registry reserve the right to ask for any further proof of eligibility if it considers appropriate and to exercise its complete discretion in the acceptance and rejection of applicants to ensure that the spirit of the Eligibility Criteria is met.
Lawyer, Accreditation ID
Lawyer, Accreditation Body
Lawyer, Year of Accreditation
Lawyer, Jurisdiction Country
Lawyer, Jurisdiction Province/State
Frequently Asked Questions About .law Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
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Only legal professionals appropriately licensed to practise law may register.
The agreement lists the scope expressly: lawyers, barristers, solicitors, law firms and other practitioners of law. The licence must come from a recognised accredited body or an authorised government authority. A publisher producing legal content without holding a licence falls outside that definition.
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No. The registry's eligibility policy repeats the condition for registration and renewal together.
If your licence lapses, the standing of the name is affected too. The policy requires a registrant who ceases to qualify to contact their registrar within fourteen calendar days. The registry may also request confirmation of information at any point in the lifecycle, and where no answer arrives within fourteen days the name can be suspended or terminated.
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They name the same profession under opposite contractual regimes.
In this zone registration is confined to licensed practitioners; in the other, the agreement forbids the operator from setting eligibility limits based on identity, leaving the zone open to everyone. The rule is straightforward: if you hold a licence and want the address to show it, the restricted zone gives the stronger signal; if no licence verification applies to you, the open zone is the right address.
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You can, but the receiving party must satisfy the eligibility requirement independently.
The policy states this expressly: the party taking the name must be entitled to register it in its own right, which means being a licensed legal professional. That makes the zone unsuited to buying for investment or resale. You can inspect the registration record of an existing name through whois search.
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Because visitors to these sites usually make contact in order to share something confidential.
Where the page carries an appointment form, a case summary or a document upload field, the certificate moves beyond a technical requirement and becomes a professional responsibility. A prospective client who meets a browser warning leaves without completing the form. Review the options on the SSL certificate page.
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