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Ask any managing partner who has fired a marketing agency what the hardest part was, and most will not say the search for a replacement. They will say getting their own website back.
It is a strange thing to lose control of something with your firm's name on it, but it happens constantly. A firm pays for years of design work, blog content, and search optimization, decides to make a change, and then discovers the domain is registered to the agency, the hosting account is in the agency's name, and nobody at the firm has a login to the content management system. The website everyone assumes belongs to the firm legally belongs to someone else.
This is the single most common regret firms report after ending a marketing contract. It is also entirely preventable, and checking your current setup takes about ten minutes.
The pattern is almost always the same. A firm signs on with an agency early, often before anyone on staff knows much about domains or hosting. The agency offers to "handle everything," which sounds efficient and usually is, right up until the relationship ends. Then the firm learns that handling everything meant the agency registered the domain under its own account, set up hosting on its own servers, and built the site inside a content management system the firm has never logged into.
When the firm tries to leave, the agency may ask for a release fee, slow walk the transfer, or in some cases simply stop responding. None of this requires bad faith on the agency's part. Plenty of agencies structure things this way out of habit or convenience, not an intent to trap a client. But the effect on the firm is the same either way: a website rebuild, a period of downtime, and lost search rankings the firm spent years building.
You do not need a developer to check this. You need about ten minutes and a few logins.
Domain registration. Your domain name, the part after "www" in your web address, is registered through a domain registrar and renewed annually or every few years. You can run a quick lookup through ICANN's WHOIS lookup tool or your registrar's own search to see who the registrant of record is. If the listed registrant is the agency's company name rather than your firm's legal name, your agency owns your address on the internet, not you.
Hosting account. Hosting is the server space where your actual website files live. Ask directly: whose name is on the hosting account, and does the firm have an independent login with full administrative access, not just a view only account? If the agency cannot answer this clearly or quickly, that is itself a signal worth paying attention to.
Content management system access. Most modern sites run on a platform like WordPress or a similar system where content gets added and edited. Confirm the firm has its own administrator login, separate from any account tied to an individual employee at the agency, and that someone on your staff has actually tested that login recently.
If any one of these three checks comes back unclear, you do not technically own your website. You rent access to it from your agency.
Most agencies are not trying to trap clients, but contract language written years ago, before a firm understood what to ask for, can leave an agency holding more control than either side intended. Watch for a few specific patterns when reviewing an existing contract or a new one.
Look for silence on ownership rather than an explicit transfer clause. A contract that never states who owns the domain, hosting account, and website files after termination is a contract that defaults to whoever's name is actually on those accounts, regardless of who paid for them.
Look for a termination section that describes an offboarding fee or a required transition period without specifying what gets handed over and in what condition. A vague promise to "assist with transition" is not the same as a commitment to transfer full administrative access within a set number of days.
Look for proprietary platform language, meaning the agency built your site on a system it owns and licenses to you, rather than a standard platform you could move freely. This is common with agencies that build custom tools, and it is not automatically a problem, but it does mean leaving may require a full rebuild no matter how clean the contract is.
None of this touches on the legal advertising rules that separately govern your marketing content. Under ABA Model Rule 7.2, a lawyer is permitted to advertise through written, recorded, and electronic media, but the disciplinary risk for what that advertising actually says rests with the firm, not the agency producing it. A firm that does not own its own website is doubly exposed: it cannot easily fix misleading language on a page it does not control, and it cannot quickly correct course if a bar complaint points to something on the site, since ABA Model Rule 7.1 requires that communications about a lawyer's services not be false or misleading.
Before you sign with a new agency, or renew with your current one, get written answers to these questions:
If a firm is comparing more than one agency and wants a neutral framework for this kind of review, our guide to choosing a law firm marketing agency walks through contract terms, pricing models, and ownership questions in more depth. Our breakdown of what law firm marketing actually costs is also worth reading alongside it, since ownership terms and pricing structure tend to show up in the same section of a contract.
If you ran the three checks above and found gaps, do not wait for a renewal date to fix it. Email your current agency this week and ask, in writing, for the domain to be transferred or re registered under the firm's own account, for a firm owned login to the hosting account, and for administrative access to the content management system. A reasonable agency will handle this without friction, often within days. If you get resistance, vague timelines, or a request for a release fee that was never mentioned in your original contract, treat that as useful information about the kind of partner you are working with, separate from the quality of their actual marketing work.
This same ownership question matters for every piece of your marketing stack, not just the website. If you run paid search campaigns, Local Service Ads, or use any call handling tool, check who owns the ad accounts and the phone numbers tied to them too. Our related piece on attorney advertising rules and marketing compliance covers how these pieces fit together under your bar's rules.
Plondo's law firm marketing service is built so the firm keeps ownership of its website, domain, and hosting from day one, alongside paid search management, Local Service Ads, and an AI receptionist that screens intake calls and flags a possible conflict of interest for your own staff to confirm before anything moves forward. You can see how that setup works at plondo.com/law-firm-marketing.
How do I find out who owns my law firm's domain right now? Run a WHOIS lookup on your domain name through a registrar lookup tool or ICANN's own lookup service. The registrant name and organization listed there tells you who technically controls the domain, and it is often not your firm.
Can an agency legally hold my website hostage if I stop paying them? If the agency's name is on the domain registration or hosting account and your contract does not require a transfer on termination, they can refuse to hand over access or charge a steep fee to release it. This is a contract and account structure problem, not usually a criminal one, which is exactly why reviewing the contract before signing matters so much.
Does switching agencies mean rebuilding my website from scratch? Not if you own the domain, hosting account, and a copy of the site files or a content management system login. With full ownership, a new agency or an in house hire can take over the existing site. Without it, you may end up rebuilding simply because the old agency will not release what you need.
Run a WHOIS lookup on your domain name through a registrar lookup tool or ICANN's own lookup service. The registrant name and organization listed there tells you who technically controls the domain, and it is often not your firm.
If the agency's name is on the domain registration or hosting account and your contract does not require a transfer on termination, they can refuse to hand over access or charge a steep fee to release it. This is a contract and account structure problem, not usually a criminal one, which is exactly why reviewing the contract before signing matters so much.
Not if you own the domain, hosting account, and a copy of the site files or a content management system login. With full ownership, a new agency or an in house hire can take over the existing site. Without it, you may end up rebuilding simply because the old agency will not release what you need.
Plondo builds the website, the SEO, the paid search, and the AI intake receptionist that answers the phone and books consultations for your firm, with no contract. It screens callers and flags a possible conflict for your team to confirm, and it never gives legal advice.
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