Rocket Lawyer UK launches with 20 panel firms

Google-backed Rocket Lawyer is set to launch in the UK next week with a combined offering of online legal forms and face-to-face advice through a network of regional law firms.

Started in the US in 2008, Rocket Lawyer set foot in the UK in March 2012 and signed up the first firm on its ‘On Call’ panel, Sheffield-based Simpson Sissons & Brooke, on 12 July.

By early September the legal platform had lined up 10 firms with whom it was already finalising service level agreements.

When it officially launches on 28 November, Rocket Lawyer UK will have 20 firms on board, some with several branches, amounting to two firms in ten regions covering the whole of England and Wales.

Managing director Mark Edwards (pictured) told Solicitors Journal there were already plans to expand to Scotland and Ireland, although more work on the content would be required.

Initially aimed at small businesses the new platform will include a web-based suite of legal forms and precedents specifically tailored for the English market.

Edwards said a service aimed at private individuals would be also be unveiled that day, which at this stage would be limited to “the bare essentials” such as wills and power of attorney.

He said a full family law and consumer service would be developed next year, including nanny agreements.

Conveyancing will not be actively marketed but instead Rocket Lawyer customers will be passed straight to one of the panel firms.

“We won’t be competing for these customers at the moment because this market is too crowded,” Edwards said.

Rocket Lawyer customers will pay an annual subscription of around £250 for businesses and £100 for individuals.

This will allow access to all the forms and precedents, half an hour’s legal advice with a lawyer per legal issue, and 33 per cent off their standard rates after that.

Asked whether panel firms had any reluctance to sign up to these terms Edwards said they preferred it to referral fees.

Unlike its main competitor LegalZoom, Edwards said Rocket Lawyer did not offer transactional services but a range of products – the online forms – and access to approved lawyers for advice – its On Call panel firms.

LegalZoom confirmed its intention to enter the UK market in September, via a partnership with QualitySolicitors.

QualitySolicitors has since started a new marketing campaign attacking “faceless” legal services providers and retailers.

The campaign features characters in suits, whose heads have been replaced with onions, car tyres and coins – an attack on the Co-op, the AA and banks.

Rocket Lawyer’s statement that it was “not a faceless organisation” was not a response to the QS campaign, Edwards said.