rocket lawyer review
It's 2020, legal services are expensive. That's a little bit of an understatement. How many jokes are there about lawyers being sharks in the water or that they're money hungry?
Online services like Rocket Lawyer are attempting to change that and make legal services more accessible. But are they succeeding?
Read our Rocket Lawyer review below to find out.
Contents
Rocket Lawyer has been around for a while, or at least its founder, Charles Moore, has.
Charles started his law career in 1996 at Venture Law Group. You may know them from their representation of Yahoo! and Web TV in the early '00s. After that successful venture, he sold his own company and started with the idea for Rocket Lawyer.
He used the money from selling his business OnStation Corp. to create the beginnings of Rocket Lawyer. His goal was access – a platform where legal documents are easily shared and understood.
With that and some seed money, he started his business. At first, he targeted business people who needed to do tasks such as registering their LLC or establishing their business name. He made sure his prices were less than an individual attorney would charge.
The site suffered a little bit in the 2008 recession, so Charles Moore regrouped. He decided that a one-time monthly subscription-based model would be better. So that's what they did.
And this was a great thing for his business. They went from 1 million dollars of revenue in 2008 to more than 5 in 2009. That jump also came from/with more monthly site visitors – which increased by about 800.000.
After that impressive year, Rocket Lawyer got some good money from LexisNexis to the tune of about 2 million dollars. That leads to the LexisNexis bigwig Ralph Calistri to come onto the Rocket Lawyer Board.
The board is well populated, included former LinkedIn CEO, Dan Nye. He's now the president and CEO.
Things have only started looking up, monetarily, for Rocket Lawyer. After appointing Nye, they started seeing numbers in the range of 100,000 new accounts per month.
Pretty impressive!
2010 wasn't a bad year either, they took out some equity to the tune of $7 million to expand even further. The next year (2011) saw about 18.5 million dollars in investments from donors and businesses around the country.
That took its funding level to over $43 million. It's a huge company. Since 2012, they've hit about $20 million in revenue every year, if not more.
They launched into the UK in 2012 and in 2016 opened in the European market.
If you're thinking about working with such a huge company, you need to know your business and information won't get swept under the rug. That's where business values come in.
Rocket Lawyer has some impressively worded ones, which makes them sound like a great company. We'll investigate if they live up to them later on.
The first value they list is, “Focus on the user and everything else will follow”. This is an encouraging value if you're someone looking to work with this company.
They do have a big, mostly happy, user base – so we can venture to say they follow through.
Second, they say it's better to do one thing really, really well. We'd agree, on a theoretical level. Too many businesses nowadays are desperate for more users and are spreading themselves too thin.
Finally, their last value is “fast is better than slow” though it doesn't seem like anything about the Rocket Lawyer company happened slowly.
No company is perfect, even our company. Each one has their pros and cons, not including internal issues. What matters to consumers (and investors) is how you address any issues and not let them affect your clients.
That said, what are Rocket Lawyer's issues? We'll get there, but we're a positive thinking bunch, so let's start first with the pros.
What do you get by working with this well-funded company? Well, some people swear by them, here's why.
Yes, if you start working with Rocket Lawyer your first seven days are free. But keep in mind seven days is almost nothing when it comes to legal and business daytime.
However, it is enough time to figure out the features they offer and see if you like their interface. Maybe you'll use this time to talk to a few different attorneys and find a good fit.
Either way, you'll have to decide if it's the right fit in seven days. After seven days, you're looking at their monthly fee programs, which start at $39.99 – but we'll get into pricing later.
This is a big deal. You already know that Google makes all the rules on the internet – or at least it seems like it. So when Google backs a business that adds some serious street cred.
It would be like if Neil Patel tapped your marketing company on the shoulder and told you publically that you were doing a good job.
Google Venture not only publicly declares their trust in Rocket Lawyer, but they've funded them. So Google money + Google's trust? That's a double (happy) whammy.
You may have heard of other Google Venture Companies, they're little names like Uber, Jet, theSkimm, Nest, and so on. If you really want to dig into the Google Venture universe, find their portfolio here.
Especially if you live in anything other than Eastern time, you know how painful it is to get a hold of customer service. It's like by the time you think about needing to contact them, it's already 4:50 pm eastern.
That's not an issue with Rocket Lawyer's customer support. They're open from 9 AM Eastern time to 9 PM. That means even if you live way over on the Pacific coast you can call them up to 6 PM Pacific.
Pretty great, huh? That means you don't have to use the precious time you could have spent talking to clients or building your business trying to get through online issues.
And, from what we hear online, their customer service representatives are pretty great. They take their time with each person and really help delve into an issue.
There aren't super long waiting times to get ahold of them either. Sure, you may be on hold for ten minutes if it's busy, but some places will make you listen to that terrible music for 40 or 45, which can really dig into your day.
What people really have to say negatively about RL is that they're expensive. Just because you pay their monthly fee doesn't mean you won't have to pay extra.
For example, it costs $100 to establish an LLC through Rocket Lawyer. But you're already paying for your membership, monthly.
Surprisingly, that's the only con we could find on all of the internets. Price.
Which, to be fair, is a pretty big deal to a lot of small business owners and employees alike.
We'll talk a little bit about reviews later, but there is some information about pricing challenges on their BBB profile. They are BBB registered – which is a good thing.
Yet, each of their negative reviews has something to say about expensive services or hidden fees. One even talks about getting a sales pitch from an RL Lawyer. That's not good form.
If the price isn't an issue for you, or you can make their fees work, then there's no reason not to look into Rocket Lawyer. You should, of course, do your research on their competitors.
Mostly, they compete with LegalZoom which we've already reviewed. If you'd like a summary, people have either GREAT experiences with LegalZoom or they aren't impressed.
Those who aren't impressed do seem to get what they need – but without any bells or whistles. LegalZoom is a little bit cheaper, but there are apparently hidden fees.
Okay, that was a lot of information. And maybe you're wondering – what will I really pay if there are all these hidden fees or unexplained charges?
Well, according to RocketLawyer, their membership price schedule looks like this.
Their lowest monthly membership is $39.99. You can upgrade to a $49,99 package if you so wish. You get a little more with that package, so it's up to you if you want to pay the extra $10 a month.
However, those are just base fees. There are add-on charges for about everything you'd need, save for regular legal document processing.
Under that monthly membership price, you get a few things.
However if you want to do something that takes more time, like register an LLC, you'll pay $99. That includes (in most states) official registration. But keep in mind, this is a repetitive process.
You have to register your LLC every year to keep it on file with the state.
There's nothing more helpful than reading reviews of people who've worked with a company. In fact (if you didn't know) 82% of people trust reviews over a company's word.
When it comes to creating Wills and Testaments (a popular online service) here's what consumers have to say.
One reviewer says that the primary form filling and mapping out process takes longer than it does on other sites. But, they did feel like the time they spent was worth it. The end product was more detailed and they felt they got their money worth.
They go on to describe that you have storage and editing rights on Rocket Lawyer during the time you've paid for. That means if you have a new asset that you just learned about, you can add it to your will with no extra charge.
If you have to start over on the will processes or write a new version, Rocket Lawyer stops you from having to go back and void your last copy. They'll help you create a revocation document so you're not back at square 1.
To be fair to and objective, here's a negative RL review filed officially with the BBB. The general gist of it is below.
This client started working with RL and all of a sudden noticed charges they didn't authorize. After speaking with RL customer service, they told the client they couldn't find their account. So, the client filed an official dispute with their bank.
After the dispute was filed, RL reached out to the client (supposedly) and told the client they'd refund her the charges if she canceled the official dispute. Which she didn't and the refund never came from RL.
We don't know if she got the dispute settled with her bank.
To their credit, Rocket Lawyer did officially comment on the BBB review apologizing and saying they'd reached out via email. There is not an update after that.
You are the only one that knows what's right for your business.
We can't tell you in one article if Rocket Lawyer is a good fit for you – but we can try to give you the best starting information to go off of.
If you found this Rocket Lawyer review helpful, great! It's our goal to make running your business just a little bit easier with every post. We hope you'll read our other like-content in the future, or right now.
Feel free to let us know if you have any other businesses you'd like us to review.
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