Hire a lawyer. Hire a specialist — Don’t just
Hire an attorney who specializes in the type of dispute you have.
A common mistake I see people make when faced with a legal challenge is hiring a lawyer who doesn’t specialize in the legal area. When you have an estate issue, you hire an estate attorney. When you set up a firm, you hire a corporate attorney. So when you have a domain name issue, you hire an attorney that specializes in domain names. Don’t just use the attorney you used to set up your business.
If you hire an attorney specializing in a number of things, they probably aren’t specialized enough to handle a domain name dispute. Even some trademark attorneys aren’t the right lawyer for a UDRP or cybersquatting dispute; you ought to hire someone who has by now handled many such cases.
Earlier today, Nat Cohen tweeted:
Telepathy is fortunate to have been represented by a number of of the top minds in domain name law, counting Zak Muscovitch (@DNattorney) , Ari Goldberger (@esqwire), Jason Schaeffer (@TLDadvisor), John Berryhill (@Berryhillj) and David Weslow (@DavidWeslow). /2
— Nat Cohen (@domainarts) March 31, 2021
Nat has seen his share of spurious claims against his domain names since he has such a valuable portfolio. He turns to attorneys who have deal with domain disputes to help him defend his domain assets.
There are a number of reasons to hire an attorney who has a lot of history with domain disputes if you ever face a challenge to one of your domains. If you hire a lawyer without deep existing knowledge of this specialty, then:
1. You are paying the lawyer to learn this area of law. You will rack up billable hours of them researching how UDRP or cybersquatting laws work.
2. They won’t understand the nuance of these cases. Skilled UDRP lawyers know the right buttons to push — and just how far — when arguing a case.
3. They don’t know the history by memory. Lawyers with UDRP experience understand the individual panelists and which cases to refer to. They either have a database or know which cases to cite by memory.
Most importantly, a good domain attorney can tell you whether you have a good case or not!
