Top Law Firm Websites Down for Several Hours; Cause Attributed to 'Hosting Incident'

Updated 3:11 p.m.

More than three dozen websites from top law firms were down Thursday morning, apparently for at least several hours.

Gone from the home pages of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Covington & Burling, Baker & McKenzie and other firms were links for attorneys and offices, among other firm details. Instead, there were links that included: "In Pain? Get Relief Now" and "Find Injury Attorneys."

The websites are hosted by One North Interactive LLC, which provides technology services to law firms. The Chicago-based company said in a message to Akin that "a hosting incident" happened at 7:35 a.m. Eastern.

"This incident was caused by an issue with a critical DNS record. The issue with the DNS record has been resolved," One North Interactive said. "However, changes to DNS take time to propagate through the full DNS tree. We will continue to monitor the issue and provide updates as we have them.”

Benjamin Harris, an Akin spokesman, said his firm's website wasn't attacked by hackers, noting that the back end of the website is functioning correctly.

Jen Bullett, a One North Interactive spokeswoman, wrote in an email that none of the websites were hacked and security wasn't breached. The company said in a client alert that the incident was the result of an "oversight in renewing a critical domain name" in its transition to an independent business. One North Interactive in August announced its formation and its acquisition of Hubbard One web group from Thomson Reuters. The deal was finalized on Monday.

"One North’s commitment to clients and the market is complete transparency, which must also include errors and mistakes on our end," Bullett wrote. "We acknowledge that this outage puts our clients in a very challenging spot and are working collectively as we speak to address all issues."

Other downed websites included the main pages of Patton Boggs; Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr; Hogan Lovells; McDermott Will & Emery; White & Case; Mayer Brown; Sutherland Asbill & Brennan; DLA Piper; Holland & Knight; Baker Botts; Foley & Lardner; Troutman Sanders; Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton; Jones Day; Weil, Gotshal & Manges; Reed Smith; Sullivan & Cromwell; Morrison & Foerster; Davis Polk & Wardwell; Ropes & Gray; Shearman & Sterling; Proskauer Rose; Dechert; Debevoise & Plimpton; Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Bryan Cave; Katten Muchin Rosenman; Fish & Richardson; Schulte Roth & Zabel; Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner; Dorsey & Whitney; Hughes Hubbard & Reed; Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel; Chadbourne & Parke; and Sutherland Asbill & Brennan.

As of 2:47 p.m., the websites of the law firms listed in this report appear to be operating properly.

Jenna Greene and Matthew Huisman contributed to this report.

Akin's website on Thursday morning.

Comments

[Rich Klein]

Great post. For those law firm leaders out there who continue to believe that they don't need any social media presence, this is the best reason for getting on Twitter and Facebook ASAP. What if those websites went down for more than a day? A week? With Twitter, Facebook (and a WordPress blog) law firms can easily communicate with their critical audiences while the hosts fix the server problems.

[John Simpson]

One North Interactive’s commitment to clients and the market is complete transparency, which must also include errors and mistakes on our end. We acknowledge that this morning’s outage puts our clients in a very challenging spot and are working collectively as we speak to address all issues. Most importantly, please understand there was NO hacking or danger to site security. We experienced a DNS outage – an oversight in renewing a critical domain name. This disruption was a byproduct of the transition into our independent business.

The sites were unavailable or had intermittent services starting at 6:30 AM CDT this morning and we had renewed the domain name by 7:20 AM CDT. Sites began coming back up at 8:30 AM CDT. The corrective action will take between 24 and 48 hours to fully propagate across the internet. Our first priority is to focus on restoring service for our clients with our team reaching out to each client to walk them through any changes and questions.

John Simpson, CEO
One North Interactive
jsimpson[AT]onenorthinteractive [DOT]com

[Kevin]

Could be need for better hosting or DNS management. Hope they're up soon, good luck!
-Kevin
Domains and Hosting
http://www.dv8domains.com

[Chicago]

Some are still down after the 1:47 p.m. update, but it looks to be mostly smaller firms like Bowman & Brooke.

[Jordan]

And they are still down. It is now 1:00.