Rocket Lawyer UK finalises deal with ten panel firms

Rocket Lawyer UK, the British offshoot of the Google-backed legal services platform, is finalising service level agreements with ten English firms to join its ‘On Call’ panel, Solicitors Journal can reveal.

“I am in discussion with 25 firms and we are in the final stages of agreeing SLAs with ten,” said Rocket Lawyer UK’s vice-president Mark Edwards (pictured).

Started in the US in 2008, Rocket Lawyer set foot in the UK in March 2012 and is aiming to launch by the end of the year with a panel of 25 small and medium-sized firms across ten regions.

Edwards said the business was on track to sign up most of the firms with whom he has been in talks by early October but that he was still looking for partners in the North East, East Anglia and the far South West.

Its first panel firm, Sheffield-based Simpson Sissons & Brooke, came on board on 12 July.

Firms are assessed for their suitability to become panel members in terms of their responsiveness to client enquiries, the quality of their customer service and their complaints procedure, and whether they have online products.

How firms handled leads was especially relevant. “So many firms just drop them when they spend so much time acquiring them,” Edwards said.

Self-selection - whether a firm took the initiative to approach Rocket Lawyer - was also a meaningful first step.

Lexcel accreditation was not a requirement but would be taken into account as part of the firm’s overall approach to client and matter management.

Rocket Lawyer’s pledge to consumers is to offer “straightforward affordable legal services” through a combination of DIY forms and discounted services provided by panel firms.

Edwards described the business model as “freemium”, with three layers, starting with free ‘do it yourself’ forms and precedents.

Rocket Lawyer has developed its own documents and work flows rather than buy them in from a specialist document-assembly business like Epoq.

The English law forms, currently being drafted by lawyers, will follow a scenario model taking users step by step through the various stages of the process depending on their circumstances.

For an annual subscription, users will be able to access the second layer, or ‘do it with me’, which will allow them to ask questions or have the forms checked by a lawyer.

The subscription rates have not yet been finalised but Edwards said they will be in the same range as those charged in the US - $119.90 p.a. for an individual subscription and $399 p.a. for businesses – or in the region of £100 for individuals and £250 for businesses.

As part of their commitment to Rocket Lawyer, firms must offer the first half hour of legal advice and scope the work free of charge.

The third ‘do it for me’ layer sees users rejoining the traditional route to legal services, putting them in direct contact with a lawyer on the ‘On Call’ panel for more complex matters.

If contacted via Rocket Lawyer law firms agree to offer 33 per cent off their standard rate, whether the work is charged by the hour or offered as a fixed quote.

Unlike LegalZoom, RocketLawyer doesn’t offer transactional services directly. Instead it presents itself as a super-marketing service generating leads for law firms.

Edwards said the business offered law firms its “market muscle” to help them reach out to customers in greater numbers and tap into a latent market.

He estimated this untapped market could be worth up to £12.5bn – roughly half the size of the current overall market for legal services in the UK.

“The legal services market is around £25bn, half of which is consumer and small businesses, so £12.5bn,” he said before adding: “I believe that the latent market could easily be that size again given that more than half of consumers and small businesses go unprotected on key legal agreements such as wills and partnership agreements.”