After exploring many online legal services, we decided to put together a comprehensive Rocket Lawyer review. More than 20 million small businesses and consumers have turned to Rocket Lawyer for help with everyday legal issues. Rocket Lawyer offers a range of forms and legal information for a single, low monthly rate, and gives its members access to lawyers at a substantially discounted price. Many of their services are included in a single, low, monthly fee.
Our criteria for this Rocket Lawyer review consisted of 5 categories:
- Services Offered
- Pricing
- Ease of Use
- Customer Service
- Turnaround Times
What kinds of legal services are available on Rocket Lawyer?
For consumers, Rocket Lawyer offers dozens of customizable agreements, forms, and letters for dozens of common legal situations. Members of the site can download an automobile bill of sale, a debt settlement agreement, demand for delivery, a request to cease collection activity, or a request to close an unauthorized account. Rocket Lawyer members can find a worksheet for small claims court, a form letter for giving an employment reference, power of attorney forms, domestic partnership agreements, living wills, prenuptial agreements, and form letters for dealing with Medicare, Social Security, and the IRS.
For small businesses, Rocket Lawyer offers articles of incorporation, operating agreements, business plans, business proposals, bills of sale, cease and desist letters, nondisclosure agreements, and letters of intent among dozens of other offerings.
Having an attorney draw up any one of these documents can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars and take weeks. Members of the Rocket Lawyer site get 24/7 access to customizable versions of hundreds of forms for a flat fee of $39.99 a month. Or, if you don't need access to hundreds of forms, you can access most documents for a one-time fee of $39.99 each.
Rocket Lawyer is the best online legal service provider for individuals and businesses that need templates for forms. But forms are not all that Rocket Lawyer offers. Rocket Lawyer provides affordable access to attorneys as part of the membership.
Rocket Lawyer Membership Benefits
- The $39.99 per month Rocket Lawyer membership fee includes a 30-minute phone session with a lawyer. Nonmembers pay just $59.99 per session
- The monthly membership fee also consists of an online Q & A session with a lawyer. Nonmembers pay $49 per question.
- Need document defense for your Rocket Lawyer documents? The cost of defending your downloaded document against legal challenges is included in your monthly membership fee. It's just $9.99 per document if you have let your membership lapse. (You may have to retain a lawyer separately to defend a document you did not get from Rocket Lawyer.)
- If you need to hire an attorney, members receive a 40 percent discount off a Rocket Lawyer attorney's hourly rate or 10 percent off a flat fee. Rocket Lawyer does not arrange legal consultations for nonmembers.
- And members can form their first
LLC , corporation, or non-profit organization for the cost of state and IRS registration fees. This service is available to nonmembers for $99.99 plus government fees. Once you have formed yourLLC , corporation, or non-profit, Rocket Lawyer offers registered agent service $149 per year, with a 25 percent discount for the first year.
For the $39.99 per month Premium Membership, members get unlimited access to a huge legal library, two questions answered by the Ask a Lawyer service every month, legal review of documents of up to 10 pages up to six times per year, 30-minute consultations on every new legal matter, online signatures, document printing in any format, and advanced editing tools. Rocket Lawyer offers customer support by email, chat, and phone.
What online reviewers say about Rocket Lawyer
It is rare for an online legal services company to get mostly positive consumer reviews. Rocket Lawyer reviews from users of national consumer protection agencies are overwhelmingly positive except at the Better Business Bureau:
- Better Business Bureau: 2.2 out of 5. Nearly all complaints come from failure to read the fine print. Consumers resent being billed at the end of the seven-day free trial, although they have an option to get their money back for 30 days. One reviewer noted that he was able to get a 50 percent discount for the asking when he requested annual rather than the monthly billing. The company website does not confirm this customer accommodation is a policy. The Better Business Bureau Site only displays 22 reviews, most of them negative.
- ConsumerAffairs: 4.8 out of 5. On this site, reviewers thank Rocket Lawyer for compassionate and effective service when they ran into difficult situations. However, if you keep scrolling past the first 100 reviews, you may find some negative comments.
- Trustpilot: 9.7 out of 10. Trust Pilot posts 1,660 reviews of Rocket Lawyer, 96 percent of them rating them as “excellent” or “great. Reviewers commend Rocket Lawyer's ease of use, easy navigation, and as-much-as-you-need pricing.
- Sitejabber: 4.6 out of 5. Out of 1,206 reviews on Sitejabber, 1,234 gave Rocket Lawyer a four- or five-star rating. Positive ratings emphasized how much less expensive it was to rely on Rocket Lawyer for forms than it was to have an attorney draft them. Most complaints were about getting billed “too soon” during the trial period, but Rocket Lawyer answered each complaint politely and, where appropriate, with notice of a refund.
Online Reviewers Summary
Maybe there is a problem with billing during Rocket Lawyer's seven-day trial period. Perhaps the problem is not reading the offer. But Rocket Lawyer had acted consistently to treat customers fairly.
If you know just enough about the law to find it scary, or if you are running a business in a state where you are not familiar with local laws and regulations, Rocket Lawyer is a great option. If you have a lot of customers and clients with whom you need to send “friendly reminders” through an attorney, Rocket Lawyer is your best option of all the online legal service providers. But every online legal service has its pros and cons.
Rocket Lawyer Pros
Intuitive Form Builder
Many Rocket Lawyer customers choose the service because they have a high demand for legal forms. With Rocket Lawyer, all you must do to build business forms and contracts is to answer a series of simple questions. As you fill out the online questionnaire, pop-up boxes explain the laws of your state that apply to the subject of the form or agreement. This extra step ensures that you will meet the legal requirements of your state, and the document will stand up in court.
Document Defense
Rocket Lawyer's unique Document Defense feature works in sync with its Intuitive Form Builder. When you create a custom contract on Rocket Lawyer, and the other party does not fulfill obligations or disputes the validity of your contract in court, Rocket Lawyer will come to your defense. Their lawyer will create a demand letter on your behalf, which can encourage compliance with the terms of your contract.
Online Legal Advice
Many legal service providers allow you to speak with their lawyers by phone, but Rocket Lawyer also has lawyers available for chat and email consultations. Attorneys specializing in business law, intellectual property, and contracts are on call and available to answer questions posted by Rocket Lawyer members. If you deal with a packed schedule, the ability to get an answer from a lawyer without spending hours on the phone can be very attractive. Members can ask an unlimited number of questions, while nonmembers pay a $49.99 per question charge.
Terrific Customer Service
Many online reviews indicate that Rocket Lawyer has great customer service. Representatives make a genuine effort to be helpful without trying to upsell expensive add-ons to your plan. Phone support is available from Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Pacific Time.
Seven-Day Free Trial
Rocket Lawyer offers a free trial for a week just to try them out. Up to one month's membership fees are refundable if you decide you do not like or no longer need their service.
Rocket Lawyer Cons
Membership Slightly More Expensive than Competitors
The monthly fee for Premium Membership in Rocket Lawyer is $39.99. Monthly fees for Legal Shield run $39. And your membership in Legal Zoom will set you back $375 once a year, which amortizes to $31.25 a month. (For most states, Legal Zoom also has a six-month plan that costs $216.) All three companies offer similar services, including customizable documents, document review, and access to attorneys.
So, is Rocket Lawyer really more expensive than its main competitors? The best answer is, “It depends.” If your primary need is getting templates for business documents and contracts to start your business, and you do not need ongoing legal support, Rocket Lawyer is an excellent choice. If you an author filing copyrights or a serial entrepreneur invested in multiple trademarks, you will be better off with Legal Zoom.
There are also special situations in which Rocket Lawyer may not be your best choice.
Special Situations in which Other Online Providers May Be Better
Some businesspeople know the ins and outs of their legal environment and just need help to form a limited liability company (LLC or corporation with the lowest possible fees, then at just $49.95 plus state filing fees IncFile is much less expensive,
If you need a local lawyer to represent you in court, most of the online providers aren't a lot of help. However, Avvo can get you in touch with an attorney nearby to take care of situations in which a personal appearance is required. Avvo gives you a lot more choice in attorneys and an opportunity to connect with an attorney specializing in your legal situation, but it's more of a self-service option. You will have to sort through many choices to try to connect with the local attorney whose skills best match your needs. This attorney may or may not be available and may or may not be affordable.
Rocket Lawyer Review Summary and Results
Rocket Lawyer is a great option for business people who want to manage all their legal documents in one place. If you don't have experience writing contracts, it can be a great place to learn how to write as well as how to enforce business agreements. Rocket Lawyer is an ideal option if you need general legal advice on a regular basis.
It doesn't offer tax advice, but the services that do separate tax and business services from general legal services. And if intellectual property issues are important in your business, that is, if you need help with trademarks, patents, and copyrights, Rocket Lawyer is likely to be your most cost-effective online option by a wide margin.
Dissatisfaction with Rocket Lawyer most often arises from a billing issue. The free trial requires you to call a hotline in order to cancel your account. If you don't, you will be billed until you do. They are not the fastest at filing paperwork to form an
