Rocket Lawyer is an online legal technology company founded by Charley Moore and based in San Francisco, California. Rocket Lawyer provides individuals and small to medium-sized businesses with online legal services--including incorporation, estate plans, legal health diagnostics, and legal document review. The site also provides a network of attorneys that consumers and small businesses can consult with on legal issues through its On Call service.
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History
Beginnings
In 1996, Moore began his career as an attorney at Venture Law Group where he participated in the early-stage representation of Yahoo! and Web TV. In 2009, Moore sold his company, OnStation Corp. He wanted to create an easy to use platform where legal documents can be created and shared by everyone, so he used the money from the sale, as well as early seed money to fund Rocket Lawyer.
From the beginning, the company has targeted entrepreneurs; its initial sales model charged entrepreneurs for individual legal documents at a lower cost than standard attorney rates. After the late-2000s recession, 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 and appointed LexisNexis executive Ralph Calistri to its board. In December 2009, Dan Nye, the former CEO of LinkedIn, joined Rocket Lawyer's board of directors. Nye was initially brought on as a board member, but after a few months was named to president and CEO. This allowed Moore to transition to Executive Chairman. 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. That year, Rocket Lawyer had over 700,000 online visitors each month. In the same year, 125,000 new accounts were opened each month, half of which were by small businesses. In July 2011, Rocket Lawyer raised $18.5 million in a Series D round of financing from August Capital, Google Ventures and Investor Growth Capital. Five months later, in December 2011, Rocket Lawyer raised an additional $10.79 million from Industry Ventures, bringing its total funding to $43 million. In 2011, Rocket Lawyer had 70,000 users visiting the site each day, and as a result had doubled its revenue for four consecutive years, reaching $20 million in annual revenue.
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.
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Services
Online services
Rocket Lawyer provides online legal services for individuals and small to medium-sized businesses ranging from prenuptial agreements to incorporating businesses. 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. They offer a subscription model where you pay an annual fee in exchange for greater access to the legal documents. Small business, personal documents are the most commonly used. The main service they offer is question-prompt fill in the blank forms that create custom legal documents quickly. Access is offered to real attorneys with complimentary consults if you have a subscription.
Attorney services
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. 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. Beware that you will need to spend a long time filling out your document before you discover that you have give out your credit card number for the "free" account. They will start billing you after the short free trial.
Legal Health Score
In 2008, Rocket Lawyer introduced Legal Health Score, which helps individuals and businesses understand their level of legal wellness. 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 that companies can follow to remedy any legal vulnerabilities. Rocket Lawyer offers the Legal Health Score service to all types of accounts.
Competitors
As of 2017, LegalZoom 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.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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