US Lawyers Lukewarm Over New Dot-Pro Domain

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

20 June 2003

The US law community is lukewarm over the creation of the new .pro domain for licensed professionals such as attorneys, accountants and doctors, according to a report from the National Law Journal.

Although each profession will get its own sub-domain - .law.pro for the legal community - and registration offers other benefits such as e-mail encryption software and tools to facilitate the sending of digital certificates, experts have predicted that there is unlikely to be anywhere near the interest in the domain that there was during the 1990s land grab for .com addresses.

Speaking to the NLJ, several US firms explained that they already encrypt sensitive e-mails, and expressed concerns that the software offered for this purpose on registration of a .pro domain may not be the industry standard.

There is also the feeling within the profession that the domain will not prove to be as accessible to potential clients, as Doron Levin, president of Houston-based Levin & Associates, which provides client-acquisition services for small firms explained:

'Consumers have a mindset to enter dot-com on their keyboards. I don't advise my clients to swim against the current. Most of my clients are not going to be registering.'

According to the NLJ report, although the target audience for the .pro domain is small and medium-sized law firms, the majority of interest may come from larger firms seeking defensive registrations (which do not create an active internet address, and are consequently less expensive) in order to prevent cyber-squatting.

The new domain is set to go live in mid to late July.

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