Rocket Lawyer, a site that gives regular people the tools they need to generate legal documents for any occasion, has gotten a boost with $2.1 million in funding from information service company LexisNexis.
LexisNexis rarely invests in other ventures — usually opting to acquire smaller companies it’s interested in like CourtLink, Univentio, Axxia, and, in the last couple years, Image Capture Engineering and Juris. It’s unclear why it broke from habit for Rocket Lawyer, a company whose apparent mission is to reduce the time it takes to complete legal paperwork to ten minutes or less. Clearly, it’s part of the LexisNexis’ long-time goal to remain a dominant resource for legal information (and competitive with rival Westlaw, notes peHUB), but more detailed plans haven’t been disclosed.
The investment was a tranche of a targeted $3.09 million second round of funding.
In addition to providing legal document formats ranging from employment contracts and living wills to apartment leases and bills of sale, the site gives users a checklist for filling them out and ensuring that they are legally binding. It also connects lawyers with users looking for legal advice. Lawyers can create profiles for themselves for free on the site to advertise their services. At the same time, regular folks can find lawyers offering online legal consultations — sometimes for free.
Many of the documents on the site can be downloaded at no cost, others carry a small fee or come with a paid membership. Rocket Lawyer’s Easy Legal Care Personal plan is $19.95 a month or $119.95 a year, it’s Professional plan is $39.95 a month or $295.95 a year. This is pretty steep considering that the site itself says the Personal membership can save a family up to $200 a year. And how many families need unlimited access to legal forms? Rocket Lawyer has also developed a software package with Bluecase Software that provides the same documents for $39.99.
Rocket Lawyer claims that it has 1.2 million users. Previous investors are unknown.
