Who Owns Your Law Firm Website? The Contract Decides, Not the Invoice
The short answer
Paying for a website does not make a firm its copyright owner. Under US copyright law a work created by someone who is not an employee belongs to the person who made it, unless a signed written agreement transfers it.
A website is also not one asset but four — the domain, the code and platform, the content, and the Google and analytics accounts. Each can sit with a different party, and a contract that assigns one says nothing about the other three.
Most firms assume the invoice settles it. It does not. The copyright default runs the other way, and the contract decides the rest.
This matters most at the moment a firm wants to leave, which is also the moment nobody reads the terms until it is too late.
The legal default runs the other way
Two sections of the Copyright Act settle this, and neither is obscure.
Section 101 defines a work made for hire two ways. The first is “a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment.” An outside agency or freelancer is not that.
The second covers work “specially ordered or commissioned,” but only inside nine listed categories. Those are a contribution to a collective work, part of a motion picture or audiovisual work, and a translation. The rest are a supplementary work, a compilation, an instructional text, a test, answer material for a test, and an atlas.
A website is not on that list. The signed agreement the subsection requires cannot put it there.
The Supreme Court addressed this directly in Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid in 1989. A sculptor who was an independent contractor kept authorship, because he was not an employee and the work did not fall inside the nine categories. The Court told lower courts to sort employees from contractors using ordinary agency principles, then apply whichever subsection fits.
So a signed writing does the work instead. Section 204(a) says a transfer of copyright ownership “is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance” is “in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed.” A purchase order does not do it, and neither does a paid invoice.
This describes the default rule, not any particular agreement. It is not legal advice, and it is not a reading of a contract a firm has actually signed. What a specific deal does with copyright depends on what that deal says, which is why the clause is worth finding before signing rather than after.
Four assets, not one
“The website” is shorthand for several things that can be owned separately. A proposal that promises ownership usually means one of them.
| Asset | Who tends to hold it | What goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| The domain name | Whoever is listed as registrant, which is often the agency | Leaving means asking the party you are leaving to release it |
| Code and platform | The developer, unless assigned in writing | A proprietary platform cannot move, whatever the contract says about the design |
| Content and images | The writer or photographer, and stock images are licensed rather than owned | A license that ends with the contract takes the photographs with it |
| Google and analytics accounts | Whoever created them | Years of Business Profile reviews and Search Console history stay behind |
The accounts are the quiet one. A Google Business Profile carries the reviews a firm spent years collecting, and Search Console holds the performance history that makes a migration diagnosable. Neither sits inside the website, so neither is covered by a clause about the website.
What one vendor’s terms actually say
Agency blog posts describe these contracts constantly. Published advice on this question almost never quotes a clause from one. The terms sit in public, so paraphrasing them is a choice rather than a limit.
FindLaw’s Product Specific Terms, version 1.3 of June 2023, are a useful worked example because they are typical rather than unusual.
Section 3 assigns the client “all right, title, and interest” in any work created specifically for them. That reads like full ownership until section 3(d), which carves out “Underlying Technology” the vendor “will own and retain.” The client receives a nonexclusive license to it.
Section 3(b) lets the vendor use the work in its portfolio “in perpetuity.” Section 10.7 says the vendor will develop a website for the client. The document never states who owns that website.
Section 10.9 is blunter about hosted landing pages. They sit on a subdomain described as “a subdivision of a FindLaw-owned and controlled website,” and on cancellation they “will no longer be online or accessible to any internet users.”
The contract length is not in the published terms at all. They reference an “Initial Term” and a “Minimum Term” whose actual length lives in an Order Form that is not public. So a firm cannot check the length of the commitment from the terms it can read.
What leaving looks like
Ownership only becomes visible on the way out, and three things tend to happen at once.
The site goes dark rather than transferring, because it was hosted on infrastructure the firm never held. The URLs stop resolving, so the rankings attached to them stop too. And the content may be reproducible but the platform is not, which means a rebuild rather than a move.
None of that requires bad faith from anyone. It follows from where the assets sat, and signature day decided that.
Five of the six major legal directories now share an owner. Internet Brands holds Avvo, Martindale-Hubbell, Lawyers.com, Nolo and, since December 2024, FindLaw and Super Lawyers. Moving between them is not the exit it looks like.
What to ask for, and the words to use
Five questions settle this before money changes hands. Each asks for a document rather than an assurance.
-
Ask for the assignment clause itselfNot the sentence in the proposal. The clause in the agreement that assigns copyright, and whether anything is carved out of it. -
Who is the registrant on the domain?It should be the firm, at a registrar the firm controls, with the firm’s own billing on it. -
Is the platform proprietary?If the answer is yes, the site cannot move regardless of what the copyright clause says. That is a decision, not a problem, but it should be a knowing one. -
Which accounts are in the firm’s name?Google Business Profile, Search Console, Analytics and the review platforms. Ask to be made owner now, not at the end. -
What happens on the day the contract ends?Who holds the files, who redirects the URLs, and how long the site stays up while a move happens.
Those five answers matter more than the law firm website cost quoted at the top of the proposal. Price is easy to compare between vendors. These terms almost never are, and they decide whether a firm can leave at all.
Key takeaways
- Copyright in a commissioned website stays with its creator unless a signed writing transfers it, under sections 101 and 204(a).
- A website is not one of the nine categories where a commissioned work can be made a work made for hire by agreement.
- Domain, code, content and accounts are four separate assets, and a clause covering one covers none of the others.
- Published vendor terms can assign the visible work while retaining the platform it runs on, which keeps the site where it is.
- Ask for the clause, the registrant record and the account owners before signing, because all three are harder to get afterwards.
Common Questions
Does paying the invoice transfer copyright?
No. Section 204(a) of the Copyright Act requires an instrument of conveyance in writing, signed by the owner of the rights being transferred. Payment is evidence that a deal happened, but it is not the signed writing the statute asks for.
Is a website a work made for hire?
Only if an employee built it as part of their job. The other route in section 101 is limited to nine listed categories, and a website is not among them. So for an outside agency or freelancer, work-made-for-hire status is unavailable no matter what the contract calls it, and an assignment is the mechanism that works.
What if the contract says the firm owns everything?
Then read what sits next to that sentence. Terms commonly assign the work created for the client and separately retain the underlying platform, which is a different thing and the one that determines whether a site can move. Both clauses can be true at once.
Who should be listed as the domain registrant?
The firm. An agency holding the registration is common and usually not sinister, but it means a departure requires cooperation from the party being departed. The registrar account should be in the firm’s name with the firm’s own payment method on file.
Can a firm lose its Google reviews when it changes providers?
Reviews belong to the Google Business Profile rather than to the website, so they survive a site change. The risk is access: if the provider created the profile and the firm was never made an owner, regaining control means a verification process rather than a handover.
What about the content, if a writer produced it?
The same default applies, and stock photography adds a second layer. Images are usually licensed rather than owned, and a license held by the agency may not travel with the site, which is how a redesign ends up needing new photographs.
Where these figures come from
The statute, the Supreme Court decision and the vendor terms quoted above are all linked below, so you can read the words rather than this page’s summary of them. One point is worth knowing about the rest of the advice online. Of the twelve readable pages answering this question in October 2026, none quoted a clause from any agreement. One described “work for hire” as a premium tier a buyer can pay extra for.
AttorneyPlot builds these sites too, so read this page as what it is: a position with a seller behind it. That position is the one argued above. Your own contract is where you confirm it, not this page or anyone else’s.
- 17 U.S.C. § 101 — definition of a work made for hire
- 17 U.S.C. § 204 — execution of transfers of copyright ownership
- Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730 (1989)
- Thomson Reuters — FindLaw Product Specific Terms, version 1.3
- Thomson Reuters — sale of FindLaw to Internet Brands
- North Carolina Bar Association — do you own your firm’s web presence?
- Google — Business Profile ownership and management
- US Copyright Office — Circular 9, Works Made for Hire
- ICANN — Transfer Policy for domain registrations
- Google Search Console — managing owners, users and permissions
- The Modern Firm — pricing guide, as an example of published terms
Last reviewed October 11, 2026 · How this is researched · Report a correction
AttorneyPlot designs and builds websites for law firms, so it has a commercial interest in this subject. Nothing here is legal advice and nothing here creates an attorney-client relationship; complying with the advertising rules of your own jurisdiction remains your firm's responsibility. No ranking, lead volume or case outcome is guaranteed anywhere on this site.
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