 | |
| Company type | Private Company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Legal technology, Internet |
| Founded | August 2008; 15 years ago (2008-08) |
| Headquarters | 101 Second Street, San Francisco, California[1] |
Key people | Charley Moore, Founder, Executive Chairman and CEO;[2][3]
Mark Edwards, CPO Sumit Malhotra, CTO;[4][5] |
| Products | Attorney Services, Legal Forms, Legal Planning and Local Attorney Listings |
Number of employees | 375 |
| Website | www.rocketlawyer.com, www.rocketlawyer.co.uk |
Rocket Lawyer is an online legal technology company founded by Charley Moore in 2008,[6] based in San Francisco, California.[7] It provides individuals and small to medium-sized businesses with online legal services—including incorporation, estate plans, and legal document review.[8] The company also provides a network of attorneys that consumers and small businesses can consult with on legal issues through its On Call service.[9] In 2012, Rocket Lawyer UK was launched.
In 1996, Moore graduated from UC Berkeley School of Law[6] and began his career as an attorney at Venture Law Group where he participated in the early-stage representation of Yahoo! and Web TV.[10] In 1998, he founded OnStation Corporation to provide software to the automotive industry.[11] Then, in 2008, he founded Rocket Lawyer to provide an affordable way for companies to access legal advice.[6] Moore's idea for Rocket Lawyer was to create an easy to use platform where legal documents could be created and shared by everyone.[12] In 2009, he sold his company, OnStation Corp, and used the money from the sale to grow Rocket Lawyer.[7]
From the beginning, the company has targeted entrepreneurs; its initial sales model offered a basic plan and a pro plan,[6] both of which charged entrepreneurs for individual legal documents at a lower cost than standard attorney rates.[13][14] Under the basic plan, the company provided interactive legal templates and step-by-step instructions to help businesses.[6] The pro plan gave customers access to consultations, document review, and legal representation from local attorneys.[6][15]
After the late-2000s recession, Rocket Lawyer switched to a monthly subscription-based model to increase sales.[13] After making this change, Rocket Lawyer increased its annual revenue from $1 million in 2008 to $5 million in 2009, and increased its monthly visitors from 150,000 to 900,000 over the same period.[13]
In January 2009, Rocket Lawyer raised $2 million from LexisNexis[16] and appointed LexisNexis executive Ralph Calistri to its board.[17] In December 2009, Dan Nye, the former CEO of LinkedIn, joined Rocket Lawyer's board of directors.[7][10] After a few months as a board member, Nye was named president and CEO.[18][19] This allowed Moore to transition to Executive Chairman.[19] Nye focused on improving Rocket Lawyer's customer service and utilizing an analytical approach to new products, including allowing customers to create free legal documents.[19] This helped Rocket Lawyer boost new accounts from tens of thousands a month to over 100,000 a month.[19]
In 2010, Rocket Lawyer received $7 million in equity financing from Investor Growth Capital in order to expand operations.[12][20] In July 2011, the company raised $18.5 million in a Series D round of financing from August Capital, Google Ventures and Investor Growth Capital.[21][12][22] Five months later, in December 2011, Rocket Lawyer raised an additional $10.79 million from Industry Ventures, bringing its total funding to $43 million.[21][22] By 2011, Rocket Lawyer reached $20 million in annual revenue.[21][23]
In 2012 Rocket Lawyer launched in the UK, and then in 2016 they launched in continental Europe in partnership with the French legal publisher Éditions Lefebvre Sarrut, a direct competitor of Rocket Lawyer's lead seed investor LexisNexis.[24]
In January 2013, the company acquired LawPivot, a legal question-and-answer service.[15] From October 2015 to January 2016, Rocket Lawyer partnered with the American Bar Association (ABA) on a pilot project designed to help consumers find lawyers and attorneys find business.[25][11] Information from the project was used to help the ABA with potential future Law Connect programs.[11]
In September 2018, Rocket Lawyer started integrating blockchain technology into its legal transactions in order to provide “smart contracts” for its clients. The service was beta-tested in 2018, and offered commercially starting in 2019. Under the new service, called Rocket Wallet, contracts are secured and executed automatically with blockchain encryption technology.[26] Rocket Lawyer works with the blockchain company ConsenSys and OpenLaw to provide Rocket Wallet.[26][27]
In 2018, Rocket Lawyer UK received a waiver from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to allow practicing solicitors to advise Rocket Lawyer's clients.[28] In 2017, the SRA had approved a rule change to allow solicitors to practice from unregulated firms. The rule was not introduced until 2019, so, in the meantime, SRA offered waivers to qualifying companies.[28]
Rocket Lawyer created the COViD-19 Legal Center in April 2020, with free advice, information, and legal documents for business owners during the pandemic. It provided a worksheet to help owners determine what benefits and loans they were eligible for.[29] In September, they became the first national company to be approved by the Utah Supreme Court to participate in the state's "regulatory sandbox", a seven-year pilot program for non-lawyer ownership of legal services.[30]
Rocket Lawyer provides online legal services for individuals and small to medium-sized businesses ranging from prenuptial agreementstoincorporating businesses.[31] The online legal services are available to Rocket Lawyer account holders, and give access to online legal forms, help articles, and also extend to discounts with local attorneys.[32] Rocket Lawyer's online database of legal forms was the original premise of the company, and has since expanded to include various other services.[7]
In addition to the do it yourself legal services, Rocket Lawyer offers consumers and businesses access to a network of lawyers who can review customers' legal documents, answer questions, and provide other legal services.[7][12][22] For example, if a user needs assistance in creating or editing a legal document, he or she can be connected directly to a local attorney who can provide guidance.[33][34]
In 2008, Rocket Lawyer introduced Legal Health Score, which helps individuals and businesses understand their level of legal wellness.[35] The score, which is a number between 1 and 100, is based on considerations like whether a business has incorporated or whether legal contracts are in writing.[18] Rocket Lawyer then provides both a step-by-step walk through of all the basics needed to improve a user's legal heath and a detailed action plan that companies can follow to remedy any legal vulnerabilities.[36][37][32] Rocket Lawyer offers the Legal Health Score service to all types of accounts.[36]
As of 2017, LegalZoom is Rocket Lawyer's primary Internet-based competitor in the U.S. market for legal form documents.[38] A personal finance article in USA Today stated the common perception that both LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer allow consumers to save money on legal fees but also require some self-education and legal legwork; in other words, both allow consumers to "save a few bucks by doing some of the work yourself."[39][promotion?]
Rocket Lawyer's competitors also include Nolo (formerly Nolo Press),[40] the pioneering publisher of do-it-yourself legal guides[41] and the creator of Quicken WillMaker software.[42]
