The .legal Domain: A General Ending for the Legal Field
.legal entered the root zone on 20 November 2014 under an ICANN registry agreement dated 16 October 2014, and the contracting party today is Binky Moon, LLC. The word names a field rather than a profession, so the ending stays open to every kind of work touching law. The nTLDstats page accessed on 12 August 2026 shows 31,294 registrations, of which 22,347 sit in the zone file.
Law firms, compliance and regulatory advisers, contract software, legal publishers, mediators and in-house legal teams all use the zone. The operator verifies no legal qualification of any kind. Try candidates through a .legal domain search, and compare the .law page, where registration is confined to licensed practitioners.
Merging the three endings of this field into a single sentence would be wrong, because their agreements say different things. The .law agreement contains an express clause confining registration to licensed legal professionals. The .lawyer agreement has no such limit, but it does carry clauses requiring the registrar to take the registrant's declaration of holding the authorisations and licences its sector needs. In this zone neither applies: only the open registration commitment and the duty to comply with applicable law. The practical consequence: holding an address here does not show that you hold a legal qualification, and nobody verifies one. Evidencing your standing belongs on the page itself.
.LEGAL Domain at a Glance
- Sponsoring organisation Binky Moon, LLC
- Infrastructure provider Identity Digital Inc.
- ICANN registry agreement 16 October 2014
- Root zone record 20 November 2014
- Registered domains 31,294 (nTLDstats, 12 August 2026)
- Present in the zone file 22,347 names, about 71%
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .legal domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.legal 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
$8.99 /year -
Transfer
$71.49 /year -
Renewal
$76.99 /year -
Restore
$169.90 -
Late Renewal
$11.70
Included With Every .legal 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.
.legal Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .legal 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 .legal 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 .legal 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 $11.70 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 .legal 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
.legal Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.legal Domain Registration
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .legal domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.legal Domain Support
- IDN Support Yes
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Frequently Asked Questions About .legal Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
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No. The operator verifies no legal qualification in this zone.
The agreement carries an open registration commitment, so no limit based on identity may be drawn and no document is requested. That is what lets legal technology, compliance advice and publishing, none of which require a licence, sit in the zone as well. The address on its own is therefore not a mark of authority.
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Your licence position and the nature of your work decide it.
If you are a licensed practitioner and want the address to signal that, the zone confining registration to licence holders gives the strongest signal. If you practise independently, the ending naming the profession reads directly. If you run software, publishing or advisory work addressing the field at large, this zone stays the most inclusive. Try all three together through the bulk domain name search.
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The address sets a frame, but the page itself earns the trust.
Seeing an address tied to law tells a visitor they are looking in the right place; what they then want on the page is who provides the service, which bar they belong to and which areas they cover. Registration details, a team introduction and open contact information therefore weigh more than the address does.
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Of 31,294 registrations, 22,347 sit in the zone file according to the nTLDstats page accessed on 12 August 2026, roughly 71 percent.
Seven registered names in ten are attached to a site; the rest are held or waiting. The rule that follows: single-word stems are largely taken, yet two-word patterns naming a speciality still leave room. Confirm the status of a name through whois search.
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Yes. The zone follows the standard gTLD transfer rules and adds no eligibility step.
Lift the lock, obtain the authorisation code, then open the request at the receiving provider. In advisory and software projects the frequent problem is that the domain sits in an agency account and the approval message goes there; confirm whose name the registration is in before you begin. Run the process from the domain transfer page.
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