Rocket Lawyer is an online legal technology company founded by Charley Moore in 2008, based in

San Francisco, California San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

.Hoge, Patrick
A lawyer in your laptop
''San Francisco Business Times''. June 20, 2010. It provides individuals and small to medium-sized businesses with online legal services—including incorporation, estate plans, and legal document review.Bernard, Tara Siegel
Writing a Will, With a Lawyer Looking Over Your Shoulder
''The New York Times''. September 15, 2010. The company also provides a network of attorneys that consumers and small businesses can consult with on legal issues through its On Call service.Andriotis, Annamaria
Consumers: Avoid Robosigning and Save
''SmartMoney''. October 26, 2010. In 2012, Rocket Lawyer UK was launched.

History

Beginnings

In 1996, Moore graduated from

UC Berkeley School of Law The University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Berkeley Law) is the Law school in the United States, law school of the University of California, Berkeley. The school was commonly referred to as "Boalt Hall" for many years, although it was ...

and began his career as an attorney at Venture Law Group where he participated in the early-stage representation of

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

and

Web TV MSN TV (formerly WebTV) was a web access product consisting of a thin client device that used a television for display (instead of using a computer monitor), and the online service that supported it. The original WebTV device design and service ...

.Rocket Lawyer
About: Board of Directors
''Rocket Lawyer''. 2012. In 1998, he founded OnStation Corporation to provide software to the automotive industry. Then, in 2008, he founded Rocket Lawyer to provide an affordable way for companies to access legal advice. Moore's idea for Rocket Lawyer was to create an easy to use platform where legal documents could be created and shared by everyone. In 2009, he sold his company, OnStation Corp, and used the money from the sale to grow Rocket Lawyer. From the beginning, the company has targeted

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

s; its initial sales model offered a basic plan and a pro plan, both of which charged entrepreneurs for individual legal documents at a lower cost than standard attorney rates.Klein, Karen
To Beat the Recession, Reinvent Your Business
''Bloomberg''. October 23, 2009.Spors, Kelly

''The Wall Street Journal''. August 27, 2007. Under the basic plan, the company provided interactive legal templates and step-by-step instructions to help businesses. The pro plan gave customers access to consultations, document review, and legal representation from local attorneys. After the

late-2000s recession The Great Recession was a period of market decline in economies around the world that occurred from late 2007 to mid-2009.

, Rocket Lawyer switched to a monthly subscription-based model to increase sales. 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.

Growth

In January 2009, Rocket Lawyer raised $2 million from

LexisNexis LexisNexis is an American data analytics company headquartered in New York, New York. Its products are various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper searc ...

and appointed LexisNexis executive Ralph Calistri to its board. In December 2009, Dan Nye, the former CEO of

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. ...

, joined Rocket Lawyer's board of directors. After a few months as a board member, Nye was named president and CEO.Carr, David
Making Your Business Legal
''Forbes''. October 27, 2010.Lewis, Katherine Reynolds

''The New York Times''. December 22, 2010. This allowed Moore to transition to

Executive Chairman The chair, also chairman, chairwoman, or chairperson, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the gro ...

. 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. This helped Rocket Lawyer boost new accounts from tens of thousands a month to over 100,000 a month. In 2010, Rocket Lawyer received $7 million in equity financing from Investor Growth Capital in order to expand operations.Resources for Entrepreneurs Staff
Small Businesses Avoid Getting Legal Help Because Of High Cost
''Gaebler''. October 19, 2010. In July 2011, the company raised $18.5 million in a

Series D A venture round is a type of funding round used for venture capital financing, by which startup company, startup companies obtain investment, generally from venture capitalists and other institutional investors. The availability of venture fundi ...

round of financing from August Capital, Google Ventures and Investor Growth Capital.Fisher, Daniel
Google Jumps Into Online-Law Business With Rocket Lawyer
''Forbes''. August 11, 2011.Takahashi, Dean
Rocket Lawyer raises $18.5M for web-based do-it-yourself legal assistance
''VentureBeat''. August 11, 2011.Van Grove, Jennifer
Do-it-yourself legal site Rocket Lawyer raises $10.8M
''VentureBeat''. January 4, 2012. Five months later, in December 2011, Rocket Lawyer raised an additional $10.79 million from Industry Ventures, bringing its total funding to $43 million. By 2011, Rocket Lawyer reached $20 million in annual revenue.Rubin, Courtney

''Inc. Magazine''. January 5, 2012. 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

. In January 2013, the company acquired LawPivot, a legal question-and-answer service. From October 2015 to January 2016, Rocket Lawyer partnered with the

American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary association, voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students in the United States; national in scope, it is not specific to any single jurisdiction. Founded in 1878, the ABA's stated acti ...

(ABA) on a pilot project designed to help consumers find lawyers and attorneys find business. Information from the project was used to help the ABA with potential future Law Connect programs. 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. Rocket Lawyer works with the blockchain company ConsenSys and OpenLaw to provide Rocket Wallet. In 2018, Rocket Lawyer UK received a waiver from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to allow practicing solicitors to advise Rocket Lawyer's clients. 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. 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. In September, they became the first national company to be approved by the

Utah Supreme Court The Utah Supreme Court is the supreme court of the state of Utah, United States. It has final authority of interpretation of the Utah Constitution. The Utah Supreme Court is composed of five members: a chief justice, an associate chief justice ...

to participate in the state's "regulatory sandbox", a seven-year pilot program for non-lawyer ownership of legal services.

Services

Online services

Rocket Lawyer provides online legal services for individuals and small to medium-sized businesses ranging from

prenuptial agreement A prenuptial agreement, antenuptial agreement, or premarital agreement (commonly referred to as a prenup), is a written contract entered into by a couple before marriage or a civil union that enables them to select and control many of the legal ...

s to incorporating businesses.Rocket Lawyer
Your Legal 'I Do' List: Rocket Lawyer Provides Legal Tips for Getting Married
''Marketwire''. November 23, 2010. 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. Rocket Lawyer's online database of legal forms was the original premise of the company, and has since expanded to include various other services.

Attorney services

In addition to the

do it yourself "Do it yourself" ("DIY") is the method of building, wikt:modification, modifying, or repairing things by oneself without the direct aid of professionals or certified experts. Academic research has described DIY as behaviors where "individuals ...

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. 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.Bentley, Lora
Rocket Lawyer Uses Cloud to Offer SMBs Affordable Legal Help
''IT Business Edge''. October 28, 2010.

Legal Health Score

In 2008, Rocket Lawyer introduced Legal Health Score, which helps individuals and businesses understand their level of legal wellness.Titlow, John Paul
Get Affordable Legal Guidance For Your Business with Rocket Lawyer
''ReadWrite Biz''. October 20, 2010. 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. 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 An action plan is a detailed plan outlining actions needed to reach one or more goals. Alternatively, it can be defined as a "sequence of steps that must be taken, or activities that must be performed well, for a strategy to succeed". Process ...

that companies can follow to remedy any legal vulnerabilities.Widman, Jake
Cloud Legal Service Adds Diagnostic Tool
''InformationWeek SMB''. October 20, 2010.Greenstein, Howard

''Inc.''. December 17, 2010.Bradley, Tony

''PCWorld''. October 19, 2010. Rocket Lawyer offers the Legal Health Score service to all types of accounts.

Competitors

As of 2017,

LegalZoom LegalZoom.com, Inc. is an American online legal technology and services company launched in 2001. It helps its customers with various online legal services through personalized attorney guidance from an independent network of attorneys and the L ...

is Rocket Lawyer's primary Internet-based competitor in the U.S. market for legal form documents. 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." Rocket Lawyer's competitors also include Nolo (formerly Nolo Press), the pioneering publisher of do-it-yourself legal guides and the creator of Quicken WillMaker software.

References

External links

*{{Official website, https://www.rocketlawyer.com/ Online legal services Law firms established in 2008 Internet properties established in 2008 Online companies of the United States Companies based in San Francisco GV companies Legal organizations based in the United States American legal websites