Billing, renewals, and cancellations

This guide explains how billing works on our law firms directory: how you pay, what each plan costs, when (and whether) anything renews, how to cancel, and what a billing change does and does not affect. We have written it so a firm owner, an office manager, or a marketing coordinator can read it once and know what to expect on a card statement. One principle runs through all of it: your payment status and your verification status are two separate things. Paying for a plan upgrades the placement and features of your listing in the legal directory, but it never confirms any verification check on its own. The two systems are kept apart on purpose, and this article points out where that distinction matters.

How payment works on the law firms directory

Stripe processes all payments on the directory through Stripe Checkout. When you submit a firm or claim an existing listing and choose a paid plan, you are handed to a secure Stripe-hosted checkout page to enter your card details. We do not see or store your full card number; that data lives with the payment processor. Stripe handles the charge, the card network communication, and the security around it.

One detail trips people up, so it is worth stating plainly: your account and ownership are created only after payment confirms or an administrator manually authorises the payment attempt. When you go through Checkout as a guest, there is no half-finished owner account while you decide. If you abandon Checkout or a card is declined, the listing does not enter editorial review, nothing publishes, and you are not charged. The internal payment attempt remains available to an administrator to cancel or authorise; it is never shown as a public or owner-facing listing label. Start at /submit, choose your plan, and complete Checkout.

Because the account follows the payment, the email address you use at Checkout matters. Use the address where you want your sign-in, your receipts, and your billing notices to arrive. If you run several firms or offices, decide up front whether each one should sit under its own account and email, or whether one person should manage them all.

The plans and what renews

The directory offers three listing tiers plus one add-on. The pricing is in US dollars, and the renewal behavior differs for each paid tier, so read this section carefully before you buy.

Verified Basic: $99 per year (annual subscription)

Basic costs $99 per year and is an annual subscription that renews. The card you used at Checkout is charged once when you sign up, and then again roughly twelve months later, and so on, until you cancel. Basic is the baseline presence in the legal directory. Because it is a recurring subscription, it is the tier that has a true renewal date. You can cancel it at any time (see the cancellation section), and you stay Basic through the end of the period you have already paid for. A requested cancellation is then reviewed under the directory's manual billing process. You can also upgrade to a higher tier at any time by paying only the price difference, and the annual renewal stops.

Verified Pro: $199 one-time (lifetime)

Verified Pro costs $199 as a single one-time payment and is a lifetime tier. Verified Pro is not a subscription. There is no recurring charge and no annual billing, so there is nothing to renew. You pay once, and the Pro tier lasts for the life of the listing.

Verified Premium: $339 one-time (lifetime)

Verified Premium costs $339 as a single one-time payment and is a lifetime tier, just like Verified Pro. Premium is not a subscription. There is no recurring charge and no annual billing, so there is nothing to renew. You pay once, and the Premium status lasts for the life of the listing.

"Lifetime" comes with one condition you must understand before purchasing. Premium lifetime status is suspendable without refund if the firm is disbarred or loses the docket activity that supports the Premium tier. The lifetime guarantee is a guarantee of ongoing eligibility, not an unconditional one. If the underlying facts that justify a Premium listing stop being true, for example a disbarment or a loss of the court docket activity Premium relies on, the Premium status can be suspended, and the one-time payment is not refunded in that situation. We explain the reasoning behind verification and eligibility on our /methodology page, and you can read more about who we are on /about.

News add-on: $75 per item (Pro and Premium only)

The News add-on lets a firm publish news items on the directory. It costs $75 per item and is purchased as credits: you buy credits through Stripe Checkout and then spend one credit per news item you publish. The News add-on is available to Pro and Premium listings only. It is not offered on the Basic tier. Because credits are bought up front rather than billed on a cycle, the News add-on does not renew either; when you run low, you buy more.

How to cancel a Basic subscription

Cancellation applies to the Basic plan, because that is the only tier billed on a recurring cycle. You cancel a Basic subscription from your firm's billing area inside your account. Sign in, open the billing area for the firm, and choose to cancel the Basic subscription there.

When you cancel, the cancellation is scheduled to the end of the current paid period rather than taking effect the instant you click. This is deliberate and in your favor: you have already paid for the current year, so you keep the Basic tier for the full time you paid for. Concretely:

• You cancel today, partway through your paid year.
• Your listing stays Basic for the remainder of that paid period, so you do not lose your listing early.
• At the end of the period, the subscription does not renew and no further charge is made. Stripe's terminal notice is recorded for the administrator, but that requested-cancellation event does not automatically remove your listing, plan, or access.

So cancelling does not delete your firm, either immediately or automatically when Stripe closes the subscription. It stops the recurring charge at the end of the paid period and places the terminal event in the administrator's billing queue. The administrator reviews and applies any resulting entitlement change manually. If you change your mind, contact the directory administrator; at any time before an entitlement change you can also upgrade to the one-time Pro or Premium tier by paying the price difference, which ends the annual renewal entirely.

What happens if a Basic renewal payment fails?

A failed renewal follows a different, automated path. We email the firm owner and flag the invoice for the administrator while Stripe retries the payment. If a later retry succeeds, the billing flag closes and the Basic listing continues without a lapse.

If Stripe exhausts its retries and ends the subscription as unpaid or canceled for non-payment, the paid Basic claim is voided automatically. The directory entry itself stays published, but becomes unclaimed and claimable again. The former owner's access to that firm and its paid-plan features ends. Because the public Verified badge is shown only on a currently claimed listing, it disappears at the same time; payment still did not create or prove any verification check. Refunds, disputes, chargebacks, and requested cancellations do not use this automatic non-payment rule and remain matters for administrator review.

What about Pro and Premium?

Because Pro and Premium are one-time lifetime purchases and not subscriptions, there is no renewal and nothing to cancel. You will not find a "cancel" action for them the way you do for Basic, because there is no recurring charge to stop. The only way a Pro or Premium listing changes tier is the eligibility suspension described earlier (disbarment or loss of docket activity), which is a separate matter from billing and does not come with a refund.

Receipts, tax invoices, and your billing records

The payment processor emails receipts and tax invoices for card payments. After a successful charge, whether for a Basic subscription, a Pro or Premium one-time payment, or a batch of News credits, Stripe sends the receipt to the email address used at Checkout. Keep these emails for your accounting records, because they are your proof of payment for the directory.

A few practical tips for clean records on the legal directory:

• Use a billing email that the right person actually monitors, so receipts and any renewal notices are not missed.
• For the Basic annual subscription, expect a fresh receipt each year when the subscription renews.
• For Premium, expect a single receipt for the one-time payment. There will be no annual receipts because there is no annual charge.
• For the News add-on, expect a receipt each time you buy a batch of credits.

Refunds and the no-refund framing

The most important refund point to understand is the one tied to Premium. As noted above, the Premium lifetime tier is suspendable without refund if the firm is disbarred or loses the docket activity that supports Premium. If that suspension happens, the original one-time payment is not returned. This is built into what "lifetime" means here: it depends on the firm remaining eligible, and the price reflects a one-time, non-refundable purchase rather than a deposit held against future eligibility.

For the Basic subscription, the structure already protects you from paying for time you do not want: when you cancel, billing stops at the end of the period you have paid for, and the listing continues as Basic until then. You are not charged for the year ahead once you have cancelled.

What billing changes do and do not affect

This is the section to re-read whenever you are unsure. Billing controls the tier of your listing in the law firms directory (Basic, Pro, or Premium) and which paid features (such as the News add-on) you can use. Billing does not control verification.

Verification is independent of payment, and paying never auto-verifies your firm. Upgrading to Pro or Premium changes your placement and adds features, but it does not, by itself, mark any verification check as confirmed. Verification runs through its own process, separate from the checkout that takes your money. How that process works is described on our /methodology page.

To make the boundary concrete:

• What billing changes affect: your listing tier (Basic, Pro, or Premium), whether you have access to the News add-on, your annual renewal for Basic, and the lifetime status for Pro and Premium.
• What billing changes do not affect: whether a verification check was earned. Paying does not auto-verify, and a requested cancellation does not erase an approved check. A terminal Basic non-payment lapse does make the listing unclaimed, so the claim-gated public Verified badge is hidden unless and until the listing is validly claimed again.

It also helps to remember what kind of service this is. We are an independent directory, not a referral service. We do not steer clients to particular firms, we do not take a cut of any matter, and nothing on the directory is legal advice. Buying a plan places and promotes your listing; it does not buy a recommendation, and it does not change the independence of how the directory works.

Quick reference

• Payment: Stripe Checkout. Your account is created only after payment confirms.
• Verified Basic: $99/year, an annual subscription that renews. Cancel anytime from the firm's billing area; requested cancellations enter manual administrator review at period end. Failed renewals are retried; terminal non-payment voids the claim and leaves the published listing unclaimed and claimable again.
• Verified Pro: $199 one-time, lifetime. No renewal, nothing to cancel. Suspendable without refund on disbarment or loss of docket activity.
• Verified Premium: $339 one-time, lifetime. No renewal, nothing to cancel. Suspendable without refund on disbarment or loss of docket activity.
• News add-on: $75 per item, bought as credits, Pro and Premium only. No renewal; buy more when you run low.
• Receipts: emailed by the payment processor to your Checkout email.
• Verification: separate from billing. Paying never auto-verifies.

If you are ready to choose a tier and get your firm into the directory, start at /submit and pick the plan that fits. If you simply want to understand how verification is decided before you spend anything, read /methodology first. There is no rush, and the Basic listing is always there as a starting point on the law firms directory.