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Username: dotLawInc
Date/Time: Wed, November 15, 2000 at 3:09 AM GMT
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Subject: dotLaw, Inc's Response to the ICANN Staff Report

Message:
 

 
dotLaw has reviewed the ICANN staff evaluations.  After discussions with ICANN staff and other members, we were informed that the only mechanism to respond to these evaluations is this public comment forum.  We respectively request ICANN and the ICANN Board consider this response in their review of our application as several of the points made by the staff require clarification and because it appears that elements of our application with exhibits were not reviewed as part of this process. 

Additionally, the application process is not a static process.  Since the filing of our application, we have continued to work on forming additional strategic alliances with sponsoring organizations by responding through active dialogue with individuals posting public comments, responding to organizations wanting more information on the domain, and enhancing our domain structure based on suggestions from potential users and market awareness and acceptance.

It is unclear to us whether the "staff evaluations" have created an official or unofficial "short list" and whether the Board will not consider any application currently excluded from the "short list."  We would like to state our objection to such a process if it is, in fact, reality.  We understood from ICANN that the application process would include an opportunity to respond to questions and that we would be granted an interview with the ICANN Board to discuss the application. Neither of these things has happened.  We have expended more than $100,000 and in excess of 1,000 man-hours to produce this application in the good faith belief that all applications would be considered on a level playing field and with adequate opportunity to present our case fully.  dotLaw believes that ICANN is as concerned as we are with equal and appropriate due process.  We will now focus on substantive points that are essential to the content of our application.

Overview

dotLaw has received over 160 primary comments with approximately 30 responses on our section of the ICANN public comments forum.  These comments have been overwhelmingly positive. There is clearly substantial interest in a managed sponsored Top Level Domain for the legal community, supported by the fact that dotLaw received the second most number of primary comments on the ICANN public forum section.  Attached as Exhibit A is a sample of the more substantive comments.  These comments come from a broad range of the potential users of the legal community.  We encourage all interested parties to view all of the comments received to date. 

ICANN requested proposals that were creative and would lead to effective "proof of concept" top level domains.  The staff evaluators seem to have judged our application using criteria more appropriate for selecting an unrestricted registry.  dotLaw focused on the development of a new and unique domain, not the creation of another ".com" registry.

In contrast, our focus was on meeting the requirements of a new restricted, sponsored domain. Our application addresses the significant issues that are required to be the sponsoring organization and must be viewed from a different perspective.
dotLaw is proposing much more than a mere registry for domain names.  We seek to create a domain structured to serve the needs of the international legal community by seeking and involving the legal community in the policy formulation process and domain name structuring.  The legal community is clearly responding favorably to our plans.  Examples of our continued efforts to enhance our application include but are not limited to the following:

· We are engaged in ongoing discussions with the American Bar Association and have presented the ABA with a proposal outlining its participation on our domain advisory board;
Note: The ABA, like ICANN, is about due process, therefore our proposal must be reviewed by the various appropriate boards within the ABA.  We do not expect any public comment on this proposal before December. 
· dotLaw has solicited many state and select local bar associations for input on the process and potential involvement with domain policy formulation;
· We have established a web site for the community to review a summary of our plans for the domain.  The site includes a prototype web page available for purchasers of the domain names;
· dotLaw has received the second highest number of public comments of any application and have responded to some of those who have made comments;
· We have established an interim advisory board of attorneys to provide input on the domain structure; and
· Interviewed by the National Law Journal.

We would now like to address some of the specific issues from the ICANN staff evaluation.


Technical Assessment

First and foremost there was an objection to our use of dotMD as our initial registry operator.  The objection relates to experience with a registry of a larger scale and specific technical architecture issues.  We selected dotMD as our technical consultant and registry for the first year of operations because they were, and still are, the only registry that is focused on and serving a professional domain with a sponsored/restricted domain model.  dotMD has been successful, and we continue to believe that dotMD is a valuable technical assistance partner. 

While we believe that dotMD can handle all of the dotLaw registry requirements, to address ICANN's staff's concern as to whether dotMD has adequate scalability to support dotLaw and the appropriate registry experience, we have initiated detailed discussions with one of the premier registry organization to provide registry services to dotLaw.  This premier registry organization is an ICANN accredited registrar and should provide adequate scalability to satisfy the ICANN staff.  We hope to announce the specifics of this arrangement in very short order.  dotMD will continue to assist dotLaw with technical consulting  and domain structure support.

In addition, our other partner, the Financial Advisory Services group of PricewaterhouseCoopers ("FAS-PwC") has global technology teams experienced with top level domains, web site design, scaleable Internet infrastructure implementation / practical knowledge (based on existing global infrastructures) that will clearly address any experience issues coupled with a premier registry organization.  Notably, there is no recognition by the ICANN staff in their comments that FAS-PwC is providing strategic, financial and technical assistance to dotLaw.

Business / Financial Assessment

As to our business assessment, it appears the review team found dotLaw, Inc. lacking in two areas, our marketing plan and our pro forma financial projections.

Marketing

The marketing plans of other applicants primarily focus on an advertising program that strives for volumes to a large diverse commercial public. Our program focuses not on volume, but rather on building a  professional domain in such a way as to be useful and productive to the international legal community.  Other applicants are only focused on registering large volumes of names. In contrast, dotLaw will register names as well as manage an entirely new professional domain guided by domain policies outlined later in this document. A sponsored restricted domain is not marketed the same way as a general commercial domain. 

We respectfully disagree with the assessment that our marketing program is "weak".  We point to the number of supportive public comments that were posted on our application as evidence of our ability to market the .law domain effectively.  In addition, as stated in our "Fiscal Information" exhibit to our original application, the dotLaw marketing and branding expenditure in the first year of operations is expected to be $4 million.  We anticipate this expenditure to increase in the subsequent years.

Currently the domain name registrations are anticipated to continue to increase dramatically over the next several years.  Our research indicates the legal community is consistently building a strong on-line presence.  According to Network Solutions-dotcom.com, attorneys were the second largest industry registering web addresses in 1998, in 1999 attorneys were the top business and in 2000 they are projected to be second.  The only industry group that registered more web addresses was internet services.

Furthermore, we have had numerous discussions with lawyers, law firms, and law consultants and bar associations on how to roll out dotLaw.  As stated in our application (page 6 of "Registry Operator's Proposal"), dotLaw will go on an aggressive campaign to brand the product through the following:

Marketing Plan

The key to leasing names in the dotLaw domain will be to stimulate demand for the domain names by: 1) branding the domain in relevant media, 2) offering simple, valuable, bundled services, and 3) developing a legal MetaDirectory of services supporting the profession to drive traffic to and from the domain:

Target Users of the Domain

§ Attorneys/other legal professionals
§ Legal community vendors
§ Law schools and students
§ Legal aid providers and foundations
§ Consumers

The value for attorneys is to have a powerful presence in the only law domain on the web, which should increase qualified client referrals.

The value for legal vendors, whether a bar association or a for-profit company, is to have a presence in the only law domain on the web and an opportunity to effectively market and interact with legal professionals and consumers.

The value for consumers is intuitive keyword access or single point of access to legal information and services. Search technology through domain level indexing instead of conventional search engines will make the information relevant to their geographic location, or to any location they enter.  We also intend to reserve several generic terms (i.e. family law and corporate law, etc…) to facilitate efficient domain level indexing and ensure that such generic labels are available to all individuals and entities using the dotLaw domain.

Branding

dotLaw will be simply but powerfully branded using a stylized version of the actual domain name (.law), with an emphasis on the dot. The dot will be shown larger than normal, will have contoured characteristics, and the dot graphic will contain the text "dot" to clearly show our audience how to pronounce the name. The overall brand experience will communicate relevance, extensive knowledge, intuitiveness, and comprehensiveness.

This branding will be reflected within professional and consumer aspects of the dotLaw domain. All sites within the dotLaw domain will prominently display our brand and be linked back to the MetaDirectory.

Marketing Plan

dotLaw has several major target markets: the legal community, the legal services and consumer.

The marketing plan will have several major components.
· A national marketing and branding campaign to establish awareness of the brand for consumers, the legal community, and the Internet community.
· Specific marketing to the legal community.
· Marketing by demographic metropolitan areas, to get a high level of saturation in a contained geographic market. This marketing strategy recognizes that law is a local business, and local phenomenon. dotLaw plans to capitalize on that by marketing in a DMA and creating a local demand for the .law domain services.
· As this program becomes successful, more demographic metropolitan areas will be added to build out the brand.
· Direct marketing to the attorney will be through legal societies, professional publications, professional meetings, Internet, and direct mail.
· Specific marketing to the consumer.
· Mixed media campaign on a national level. Public relations placement of materials as news items and magazine focus.

dotLaw will establish widespread awareness. We will encourage exploration and adoption through marketing communications directed to its primary constituencies. (See Media Campaign below)

The campaign will offer a powerfully simple, straightforward, honest, neutral, and effective solution to address the major concerns associated with today's crowded and confusing landscape of legal web sites. 

A) Media Campaign. dotLaw will benefit from a powerful branding campaign directed to the following markets:
1. Attorneys
2. Bar associations
3. Law Schools and students
4. Legal service vendors
5.   Consumers of legal services

The media mix is expected to consist of the following:
· Print, including selected consumer magazines and legal journals as well as business vehicles such as the Wall Street Journal to reach the investor community;
· Web marketing, including sponsorships, messaging opportunities, targeted e-mail, affiliate agreements, etc;
· Spot television in selected major markets.
· Direct print mail to selected legal industry organizations;
· Electronic billboards.

B) PR Campaign.  The PR campaign will support the positioning and awareness objectives as follows:
· Placement of feature stories
· Orchestrated "drum beat" of news releases designed to emphasize the perception of momentum.

Distribution and Sponsorships

dotLaw, Inc., will offer direct and indirect marketing of domain names. We will market domain names directly to: attorneys (including group practices), other legal professionals, support service providers and other law related organizations. Additionally, we will develop distribution relationships with legal societies and law related companies allowing them to provide domain names to their members.

dotLaw, Inc. will offer legal service companies the opportunity to market their products and services within the dotLaw MetaDirectory.  A sponsorship could include placement on the home page and/or navigational pages and dynamically generated sponsorships driven by consumer legal search requests.

Furthermore, the dotLaw marketing plan was received favorably by the Harvard law students who reviewed the new TLD applications for The Berkman Center for Internet & Society.  Under completeness, dotLaw received the highest mark and they favorably state, "3: Specific marketing plan; business plan; guidelines for content established".

Pro formas

The staff evaluations correctly state that  we pulled our proformas.  However, the reviewers fail to state that we submitted an enhanced replacement document, which fully outlines our financial position.  This document was prepared after discussions with ICANN staff.  It appears to us that the review teams may not have seen this replacement document. This replacement document outlines the fact that FAS-PwC is involved with dotLaw and is willing and able to provide full financial backing and support.

As stated in our "dotLaw, Inc. Fiscal Information":

dotLaw, Inc. has also entered into an agreement with the Financial Advisory Services business of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP ("PwC-FAS") to be the financial and strategic advisor to dotLaw and as an investor in dotLaw, Inc.  PwC-FAS has substantial experience in the development of internet based businesses, the management and security of digital data accessible through the internet and in marketing concepts and brand enhancement.  PWC-FAS is one of the largest professional services consulting firms in the world with nearly 2,600 professional employees and annual revenues in excess of $700 million. FAS-PWC will support and fund all development stage activity through award of the domain name.

We will also point out that we have all the necessary funding capabilities through FAS-PwC and/or outside venture groups to completely fund our projected initial start-up of $10 to 15 million.  If you carefully analyze the size and capitalization of both applicants accepted and rejected, our partners are significantly larger and do not have a funding problem. 

Our documents also reveal financial details about  first through third year estimated revenues of $900,000, $7,000,000 and $22,000,000 respectively.  We estimate corresponding expenses to be $8,250,000 in the first year, $10,250,000 in the second year, and the third year expenses are expected to increase with inflation and domain name growth needs.

A separate posting will follow that describes the strengths of our
application with respect to the "August 15th Criteria".

Conclusion

We respectively ask the ICANN Board to review our application and the amendments provided in this document. We do not agree with the conclusions of the staff evaluations and believe our application merits further review.   We believe our proposal provides an opportunity for ICANN to award a truly unique sponsored and restricted domain that meets all of the August 15 criteria.

We have addressed the issues raised by the staff as discussed above by:
· Entering into an arrangement with a major ICANN approved registry;
· Highlighting proposed marketing program for the domain;
· Presenting financial information that demonstrates our financial capabilities

dotLaw creates the opportunity for ICANN to award a restricted and sponsored domain.  Our concept has strength, as the staff evaluators agreed, in that it is targeted and focused at one definable community.  The community is large enough to test the professional space, but yet very manageable in size.  The community has clearly spoken that it is interested in the concept from our comments and from research on growth of legal registrations in the .com domain.  The fact that the community already has a very defined and functioning professional bar association network and requirements for licensing (in most countries) provides a solid basis for the formation of a domain advisory board.  This concept is valid and meets one of the objectives of ICANN to have a restricted space with a sponsoring organization.

Esther Dyson stated that "the internet needs to evolve, grow and change".  We agree.

Respectfully submitted,
dotLaw, Inc.     
     
     
     
     

 

Link: dotLaw, Inc.


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