Guides · Updated 06 Aug 2026
Who actually owns your law firm's website?
Four separate questions: who owns the domain, the content, the code, and the hosting account. They can have four different answers. Most firms discover the answers when they try to leave — which is the most expensive moment to find out.
You'd never accept an office lease without reading it.
Most firms accept a website on a handshake and an invoice.
Here's how to check what you actually own. It takes about ten minutes.
1. The domain
The most important one. Your domain is your firm's address, your email, and years of accumulated search reputation.
If someone else holds it, they hold all three.
How to check: go to whois.co.za and enter your domain. For non-.co.za domains, use ICANN Lookup.
Look at the registrant. Is it your firm's name, or your web designer's?
Then try to log in to the registrar directly. If you don't have the login, you don't control the domain — regardless of whose name is on the record.
Why it matters: a firm that can't access its registrar can't move hosting, can't change email provider, and can't leave a supplier without asking that supplier's permission. Some are gracious about it. Some aren't.
If the answer is wrong: ask, politely and in writing, for the domain to be transferred into the firm's name and for the registrar credentials. A reasonable supplier will do it the same week. The reaction to that request tells you a great deal.
2. The content
Every word on your site, every photograph, every practice area description.
If you wrote it, you own it. If you paid someone to write it, ownership depends on what the agreement says — and most website agreements say very little about copyright.
How to check: read your agreement. Search it for "copyright", "intellectual property", "licence" and "ownership".
If there's no agreement, or it's silent, that's a conversation to have now rather than at the point of leaving.
Why it matters: content is the part you can least afford to rebuild. Practice area descriptions, attorney profiles, articles — that's years of accumulated writing, and it's what search engines have indexed.
What good looks like: the agreement says plainly that the firm owns all content, permanently, and takes it on termination.
3. The code
The underlying build — templates, styling, functionality.
This one is legitimately more nuanced, and reasonable suppliers differ.
Some hand over everything. Some license the code while you're a client and keep the underlying template, because they use it across many sites. Both are defensible. What isn't defensible is not telling you which one applies.
How to check: the agreement again. Look for what happens on termination.
Why it matters less than you'd think: code can be rebuilt. Content and domains can't. If a supplier keeps the code but gives you the domain and the content, you can move — you'll pay someone to rebuild, but you're not trapped.
What to look for: a stated buyout figure, or a clear statement that the code transfers. Either is fine. Silence isn't.
4. The hosting account
Where the site actually lives, and who pays for it.
How to check: do you know who hosts your site? Do you have login details? Is the account in your firm's name or your supplier's?
Why it matters: if hosting sits inside your supplier's reseller account, your site exists at their discretion. If they go quiet, get ill, or close, you may have no way to retrieve your own files.
This isn't hypothetical. Small web businesses close. The firms that struggle most are the ones whose site, domain and email all lived in one person's account.
What to look for: either the account is in your name, or your supplier can produce a current backup on request. Ask for one. See what happens.
The four questions, together
| Ask | Good answer | |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | Whose name is on the WHOIS record? | Your firm's, and you have the registrar login |
| Content | What does the agreement say about copyright? | You own it, permanently |
| Code | What happens to the build on termination? | Transfers, or a stated buyout figure |
| Hosting | Whose account is it in? | Yours — or a backup on request, honoured |
Four green answers means you can leave any time you want. Which mostly means you won't need to.
Why this arrangement persists
Not usually malice. Mostly convenience.
It's genuinely quicker for a designer to register the domain on their own account than to walk a client through creating one. It's easier to host twenty clients in one reseller account. Nobody sets out to trap anyone.
But convenience compounds. Three years later the firm wants to move, and a decision nobody thought about has become leverage nobody intended to have.
The test isn't whether your supplier would use that leverage. It's whether they'd need to.
What we do
Stated here because it's the whole point of the article:
Your domain is registered in your firm's name, from day one. We don't hold it. Ever.
You own your content permanently — copy, images, everything we write for you.
The code is licensed while you subscribe, with a stated buyout at six times the monthly fee if you leave and want to keep it.
If you leave, you take the domain and content, and we'll spend up to two hours helping your new supplier at no charge.
None of that is generous. It's what the arrangement should be.
Not sure what the answers are for your firm? The WHOIS check takes two minutes and it's the one that matters most.
If you'd like the rest checked as well, send us your URL. We'll review the site properly and email you what we find — free, whether you hire us or not.
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