NameSilo

Domain Legal Support on Subscription Model

Spaceship Spaceship
Watch

Would you agree to pay a monthly fee for legal support?

  • This poll is still running and the standings may change.
  • Yes

  • No

  • Probably, depends on the fee

  • Hell NO! I'm the best!

  • This poll is still running and the standings may change.

Results are only viewable after voting.
Hello, my friends!

Since some time ago I'm thinking about combining my main profession, as a lawyer, and my hobby, as a domainer. I have a Master's Degree in International Law, that helps me understand the rules around international business and infrastructure, however I'm thinking about getting a new Master's Degree in Intellectual Property Law, that's closer to domains.

I know that lawyers charge per hour, but what about a new concept, legal support on a subscription model. Let's say you pay monthly a small amount and receive anytime support and advises in everything related to domains, for example contract drafting, UDRPs, Trademarks, etc.

It's a really interesting field for me, and I would be glad to hear your opinions.

What do you think, would you agree to pay a small fee pro month to get anytime legal support in your domaining activity?

Ted
 
1
•••
The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
I fail to see your point of this story, and I fail to see any problem. Any domainer...or at least any domainer with half a brain...that gets a UDRP claiming a trademark, the first thing they will do is lookup the trademark in question. With all of the resources online to find trademark registrations, this should take all of 5 minutes. Then you write in your response that you owned the domain before the trademark...bam. Done. It doesn't take a lawyer to do that. In fact, the only thing I learned from this story is that this guy wasted a lot of money on a lawyer, when he could have done the same thing in a few minutes himself...and he still would have won.

I still stick to my original point that most domainers will not need a lawyer.
I'm glad you are so self-confident :) You have an opinion, and we all here heard it.
 
0
•••
I'm glad you are so self-confident :) You have an opinion, and we all here heard it.

It's not really an opinion, it's more of a fact. What I wrote is the truth, not my personal opinion.
 
0
•••
What might inspire confidence would be (a) using your actual name instead of a nickname, and (b) checking your own WHOIS information, as "Maryland" and "Moldova" are two very different places. If I were looking for a lawyer for domain name issues, I'd want one who identifies him or herself properly and who is able to manage their own domain names.

However, if I sent a letter to a domain registrant threatening action under the US cybersquatting law, and got back a reply from a lawyer in some other country, then I would rest reasonably assured that the domain registrant would have no adequate defense when I brought my lawsuit.

Over the last 18 years, a number of lawyers have kicked around the idea of some kind of "UDRP insurance" or similar subscription model. As others have pointed out, the obvious problem is risk selection. Are you committed to a "defense" of every indefensible name or not? When someone comes to me with a UDRP complaint, my first piece of advice is whether they have a worthwhile chance of winning or not. For example, if there is no realistic possibility of winning a case, then I'm perfectly happy to tell the respondent that I'd only be taking their money for no good reason if I were to charge them for a defense. When you've collected $1000 from someone who has been paying you $50 a month for two years, then I don't think it's going to sit well if you say, "It's not worth defending" to someone with a hopeless case.

Alternatively, you put up some kind of meritless defense, and after enough of those, you develop a reputation among UDRP panelists as someone who can't be taken seriously. It's not as if the finite number of UDRP panelists don't have memories.

If your services were worthwhile, then you have the "bundling" problem. Three guys decide to pool their portfolio to be "one customer" from your end. You could scale your fee to the number of the domain names in the portfolio, but with a lot of domainers, that's not a static number. So, if you scale the fee to the number of domain names, then the client has to report all of their domain names to you on a periodic basis. For example, they had 5,000 domain names when they signed up. Of course, you'll need a regularly updated inventory, so you know whether a domain name was or was not in the portfolio in the first place. Someone with 10,000 domain names is going to have more frequent issues than someone with 10 domain names. But if someone signed up with you, inventoried their names with you, and then you find out that in the last five months they acquired another 2,000 domain names and now have a problem with a name that wasn't in their inventory, what do you do? Back-charge them for the excess names they were carrying, or simply say that wasn't a name covered by your services?

Of course, given that you say you are a domainer AND a lawyer, I can see where it could be a convenient arrangement for you. Since you mention that you have no relevant experience, you get to practice on everyone else's names to develop skills to use on your own. But at some point you need to decide whether you are going to be a domainer OR a lawyer, because engaging in a business in competition with your own clients is not a recipe for anything good.

TM screening doesn't work on a subscription basis either. Someone has 10,000 domain names and they come to you for TM screening. You now have many hours of work to do, which you are going to do for the first monthly fee. In month two, they say, "Thanks" and discontinue the service. You've now done dozens of hours of work for pretty much what I used to make in a weekend in college delivering pizza.

Most of the "legal issues" encountered by domainers are contract issues relating to sales performance. So, one of your subscribers, who lives in the UK, agrees to buy a domain name from someone who lives in China for $1000. The deal goes south and your subscriber loses $1000 (through a chargeback or paypal issue of some kind). Now, the economic efficiency of chasing an international legal action over $1000 is just not worth it, but you have a client who is paying you $50 a month, is out $1000 and is demanding "legal action" from their lawyer to recover that $1000. One of two things is going to happen, either you are going to explain that there's nothing worth doing, you aren't licensed to do anything in any relevant jurisdiction anyway, and they might accept that. But the more likely outcome (given the relative sophistication of a lot of domainers) is that from their perspective they've been paying you a monthly retainer for legal services, got into a legal issue, and now you are saying there is nothing you can do. After that, they are going to slag you all over the domainer blogs about how you've been ripping them off.

A simpler situation is that one of your clients is sued for a trademark issue in a jurisdiction in which you aren't licensed to practice, and all you can do is to refer them to some other lawyer in that jurisdiction. In those sorts of situations, I work with the local counsel to bring them up to speed on the relevant issues peculiar to domain names, but your client is not going to be happy thinking that they were paying $50 a month for "a lawyer", and now they are being asked to pay tall cash to some other lawyer; and I guarantee you aren't going to be happy charging $50 a month to work alongside an attorney who is billing $300 an hour on a case that takes months to resolve.

There are a lot of odd legal issues that can arise from domaining. You will end up spending a lot of time managing your clients' expectations, and revising your terms of service to include so many exclusions that your service terms will look like a printed version of Wikipedia. If you have clients in various jurisdictions with their own insurance regulations, then you may run into issues about whether you are providing "insurance" in any one of them, and run into problems of your own.

I could go on, but I've seen variations of this idea kicked around for years by many of the top lawyers in the business. It seems like a simple idea, but you'll have a very hard time matching the variables of (a) what your time is worth, (b) what your client's expectations are, (c) what kinds of issues you can realistically handle, and (c) what you can reasonably charge. Again, the first conversation I have with a prospective client is whether or not I am an appropriate lawyer to handle whatever their issue might be. That's a harder conversation to have when you are talking to someone who is already several hundred dollars into paying you for what they thought were going to be one-size-fits-all "legal services."
 
8
•••
What might inspire confidence would be (a) using your actual name instead of a nickname, and (b) checking your own WHOIS information, as "Maryland" and "Moldova" are two very different places. If I were looking for a lawyer for domain name issues, I'd want one who identifies him or herself properly and who is able to manage their own domain names.

However, if I sent a letter to a domain registrant threatening action under the US cybersquatting law, and got back a reply from a lawyer in some other country, then I would rest reasonably assured that the domain registrant would have no adequate defense when I brought my lawsuit.

Over the last 18 years, a number of lawyers have kicked around the idea of some kind of "UDRP insurance" or similar subscription model. As others have pointed out, the obvious problem is risk selection. Are you committed to a "defense" of every indefensible name or not? When someone comes to me with a UDRP complaint, my first piece of advice is whether they have a worthwhile chance of winning or not. For example, if there is no realistic possibility of winning a case, then I'm perfectly happy to tell the respondent that I'd only be taking their money for no good reason if I were to charge them for a defense. When you've collected $1000 from someone who has been paying you $50 a month for two years, then I don't think it's going to sit well if you say, "It's not worth defending" to someone with a hopeless case.

Alternatively, you put up some kind of meritless defense, and after enough of those, you develop a reputation among UDRP panelists as someone who can't be taken seriously. It's not as if the finite number of UDRP panelists don't have memories.

If your services were worthwhile, then you have the "bundling" problem. Three guys decide to pool their portfolio to be "one customer" from your end. You could scale your fee to the number of the domain names in the portfolio, but with a lot of domainers, that's not a static number. So, if you scale the fee to the number of domain names, then the client has to report all of their domain names to you on a periodic basis. For example, they had 5,000 domain names when they signed up. Of course, you'll need a regularly updated inventory, so you know whether a domain name was or was not in the portfolio in the first place. Someone with 10,000 domain names is going to have more frequent issues than someone with 10 domain names. But if someone signed up with you, inventoried their names with you, and then you find out that in the last five months they acquired another 2,000 domain names and now have a problem with a name that wasn't in their inventory, what do you do? Back-charge them for the excess names they were carrying, or simply say that wasn't a name covered by your services?

Of course, given that you say you are a domainer AND a lawyer, I can see where it could be a convenient arrangement for you. Since you mention that you have no relevant experience, you get to practice on everyone else's names to develop skills to use on your own. But at some point you need to decide whether you are going to be a domainer OR a lawyer, because engaging in a business in competition with your own clients is not a recipe for anything good.

TM screening doesn't work on a subscription basis either. Someone has 10,000 domain names and they come to you for TM screening. You now have many hours of work to do, which you are going to do for the first monthly fee. In month two, they say, "Thanks" and discontinue the service. You've now done dozens of hours of work for pretty much what I used to make in a weekend in college delivering pizza.

Most of the "legal issues" encountered by domainers are contract issues relating to sales performance. So, one of your subscribers, who lives in the UK, agrees to buy a domain name from someone who lives in China for $1000. The deal goes south and your subscriber loses $1000 (through a chargeback or paypal issue of some kind). Now, the economic efficiency of chasing an international legal action over $1000 is just not worth it, but you have a client who is paying you $50 a month, is out $1000 and is demanding "legal action" from their lawyer to recover that $1000. One of two things is going to happen, either you are going to explain that there's nothing worth doing, you aren't licensed to do anything in any relevant jurisdiction anyway, and they might accept that. But the more likely outcome (given the relative sophistication of a lot of domainers) is that from their perspective they've been paying you a monthly retainer for legal services, got into a legal issue, and now you are saying there is nothing you can do. After that, they are going to slag you all over the domainer blogs about how you've been ripping them off.

A simpler situation is that one of your clients is sued for a trademark issue in a jurisdiction in which you aren't licensed to practice, and all you can do is to refer them to some other lawyer in that jurisdiction. In those sorts of situations, I work with the local counsel to bring them up to speed on the relevant issues peculiar to domain names, but your client is not going to be happy thinking that they were paying $50 a month for "a lawyer", and now they are being asked to pay tall cash to some other lawyer; and I guarantee you aren't going to be happy charging $50 a month to work alongside an attorney who is billing $300 an hour on a case that takes months to resolve.

There are a lot of odd legal issues that can arise from domaining. You will end up spending a lot of time managing your clients' expectations, and revising your terms of service to include so many exclusions that your service terms will look like a printed version of Wikipedia. If you have clients in various jurisdictions with their own insurance regulations, then you may run into issues about whether you are providing "insurance" in any one of them, and run into problems of your own.

I could go on, but I've seen variations of this idea kicked around for years by many of the top lawyers in the business. It seems like a simple idea, but you'll have a very hard time matching the variables of (a) what your time is worth, (b) what your client's expectations are, (c) what kinds of issues you can realistically handle, and (c) what you can reasonably charge. Again, the first conversation I have with a prospective client is whether or not I am an appropriate lawyer to handle whatever their issue might be. That's a harder conversation to have when you are talking to someone who is already several hundred dollars into paying you for what they thought were going to be one-size-fits-all "legal services."
Wow! Can I hire you? :xf.wink:
I have no legal issue at hand, but will think of something :xf.grin:
 
0
•••
We all have health insurance that is used maybe a few times a year, even if we pay every month for it, and those few times worth more than all the money paid monthly. Legal support is the same, you never know when you would need it, but regret if you don't have it in the right moment.

This analogy isn't really accurate, though. It is certain that I am going to need health services. I know that I'm going to get sick or injured at some point, I just don't know when, and that is not the time to buy health insurance. I also know, for example, that at some point I'm going to have auto repairs, plumbing problems, and other things that I don't pay a mechanic or plumber a monthly fee to be "on call" for me, but I can hire them when I need them.

Additionally, if I buy, say, a repair warranty for my car, I know that I can take it to the designated local repair shop and get my car fixed. If I'm paying some guy in Moldova to provide legal services, and I get sued in France, there's not a thing that guy in Moldova can do for me. My health insurance gets me a doctor that I can actually use if I get sick. If I have a heart problem, my health insurance gets me a cardiologist. If I have a skin problem, my health insurance gets me a dermatologist who can actually treat my skin. What my health insurance doesn't do is get me the same doctor to treat whatever might be wrong with me, because he promises that he learns new stuff fast, since it is an enjoyable hobby for him.

But, I'd also be interested to know how you manage conflicts if the model is a "large number of clients paying a monthly fee." One of your subscribers gets into a contract dispute with another one of your subscribers. What then?
 
Last edited:
2
•••
1
•••
0
•••
Oh, great, so, you're a Full Service Law Firm...?

Yes, but my free advice has a "double your money back guarantee".

I'd also point out that if I was offering some sort of "legal services by subscription" to people in jurisdictions where I'm not licensed to practice, then my malpractice insurance company would definitely want to know about that, and not in a good way.

Now, I don't know what the licensing and insurance requirements are in Moldova, but if anyone in the US enters into a "terms of service" provided by someone providing legal services, and if that contract attempts to limit the potential liability of the service provider in the event something goes wrong, that's a flat-out illegal contract in every state in the US.
 
2
•••
Thanks @jberryhill! I can see you are really experienced in this field. Even all your posts here are good to gather experience. So, I decided to step back from this idea :)

So, my friends, I recommend to contact jberryhill if you have any legal problems, he is able to help you.
 
2
•••
Thanks @jberryhill!So, I decided to step back from this idea :)

So when I told you it was a bad idea and rebutted each of your points, you basically told me I had a big ego. Now you are finally seeing the light after jberryhill's posts? :whistle::xf.grin:
 
0
•••
I pay him $10 a month to agree with me.
 
0
•••
0
•••
0
•••
At least we know who voted "Hell NO! I'm the best" : wink :

This is a great discussion that has certainly raised my awareness of potential issues that I had not really ever considered previously.

Kudos to both @jberryhill and @Ted.T - it is my sincere wish to never need to contact either of you for professional purposes : grin :
 
2
•••
  • The sidebar remains visible by scrolling at a speed relative to the page’s height.
Back