ZenBusiness reviews its own products and services and compares them to others in the industry.
With more than 25 million customers served since they opened in 2008, Rocket Lawyer processes a huge volume of LLC formations and other business services. There are many providers offering LLC filing, and Rocket Lawyer is one of the most popular. This Rocket Lawyer LLC service review will help you discern whether you’d like to enlist the help of their services for your business.
Rocket Lawyer has been in business since 2008, and they’ve served 25+ million customers since then, although it’s unclear how many of those are business clients as opposed to individual customers. Overall, they’re the largest company in the online legal services industry.
One fun fact about Rocket Lawyer is that their business model is built around their legal services subscription plan. Costing $39.99 per month, this plan includes access to a legal document library, consultations with business attorneys, free formation service (for new members), and other discounts.
✔ Rocket Lawyer gets good feedback from their clients, with thousands of positive reviews available online.
✔ They offer a legal services subscription that includes all sorts of document filings (including LLC formation service at no extra charge to new members) while also granting access to attorney consults and more.
✔ With more than 25 million customers since 2008, Rocket Lawyer is the most popular online business services provider in the United States. They have a level of customer volume that even LegalZoom isn’t close to matching.
✔ Rocket Lawyer has extended customer support hours that run for 12 hours every weekday, and their service agents are helpful in our experience.
✔ As long as you contact them within 30 days of purchase, they offer a satisfaction guarantee that covers 100% of all fees paid to Rocket Lawyer. They’ll either resolve the issue, credit your account for other purchases, or simply give your money back.
✖ If you choose not to join Rocket Lawyer’s $39.99/month legal services program, their pricing is fairly high for what you get. Their $99.99 package for non-members is a slim offering compared to other LLC services that offer more features while charging less. For example, at ZenBusiness, we’ll form an LLC for free. All you have to do is pay the state filing fee.
Rocket Lawyer doesn’t have multiple LLC formation service packages like many of their competitors do. Instead, they offer two alternate options to customers looking to form an LLC online: either subscribe to their legal services program or purchase a one-time LLC formation.
➢ Preparation and Filing of Your Articles of Organization: This is the document submitted to your state of formation to officially create your new company. Rocket Lawyer will draft this document and then file it with the state.
➢ Business Name Availability Search: They will search through your formation state’s business database to see if your desired business name is available or if it’s already claimed by another company.
➢ Online Document Storage: You can access electronic copies of your filed formation papers at any time using Rocket Lawyer’s online platform.
➢ Hard Copies: In addition to online access, Rocket Lawyer will also mail hard copies of your completed Articles of Organization to you.
Rocket Lawyer’s bread and butter is their legal services subscription, which includes LLC formation service for new members. You can try their subscription for free for seven days, after which you’ll pay $39.99 per month. You can cancel your Rocket Lawyer legal services subscription at any time.
When it comes to features for the LLC service itself, there’s no difference between the member and non-member formation packages. The difference lies in the other features you receive in the subscription. If you want to check out the full explanation of features, check out their website. For now, we’ll give a quick breakdown:
➢ Legal Documents with Document Defense: Quickly create a wide variety of business documents that you can sign, share, download, and print at your convenience. With every document, you’ll receive Document Defense, which is an attorney review.
➢ Ask a Lawyer Your Legal Questions
➢ 30-Minute Consultation on Every New Legal Matter
➢ Discounts on Attorney Services
➢ 25% Off Best Registered Agent Service
➢ 25% Off Future Incorporation Filings
Looking for a review of PLLC and PC formations from Rocket Lawyer? See our Formation Service Review
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Rocket Lawyer is more expensive than some competitors based on what services they offer. You can easily spend less somewhere else while also receiving a wider variety of features.
However, for the right customers, Rocket Lawyer’s monthly legal membership could be a good benefit, as it provides valuable discounts and free document templates for your business. The monthly fees can add up quickly, so we suggest you do your research before jumping in and signing up. If your business will have significant legal needs, Rocket Lawyer’s services may save you money over a traditional legal service.
Rocket Lawyer was established in 2008 as a way for customers to have access to online legal services. Over the last decade, they’ve expanded their offerings to include everything from wills to advice on legal issues and help starting a business. They’ve helped more than 20 million customers, although this number includes their many personal customers, not just their business clients.
As we briefly discussed earlier, customer feedback is a pro for Rocket Lawyer. We found nearly 10,000 reviews on reputable third-party review sites, and the majority of them were positive.
Rocket Lawyer offers phone, chat, and email support, with operating hours from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday.
We called to clarify the timeline for receiving finalized documents back for business formation and were pleased with the service we received. We also emailed with a question and received a response in about 24 hours. Similarly, we received a good response with some elaboration on our next steps and the offer to help more if needed.
When we tried their chat feature, it didn’t quite work the way we expected. Instead of messaging with a Rocket Lawyer representative, the chat is actually more of a searchable FAQ. You type in a few keywords about the issue you’re having, and they show you results that match your keyphrase.
If that doesn’t solve your problem, you can then request live assistance, which does pull up the expected person-to-person messaging function with a Rocket Lawyer rep. All told, the chat feature is a bit convoluted in its presentation but it does work once you figure it out.
Ordering business formation with Rocket Lawyer can be easier or harder than other services, based on your perspective. They don’t have tiered packages as many of their competitors do. Instead, you walk through a handful of add-ons before checking out.
There are positives and negatives to this approach. On one hand, they’ve simplified their offerings to eliminate confusion for their customers over what is needed and what isn’t. However, since you don’t really know everything they offer until you make it to checkout, you can’t compare their prices without putting in a little extra work.
Still, it only took us about 10 minutes to walk through the form, make our selections, and reach the checkout screen.
If you’d like to get an estimate for turnaround times for your state of formation, click through the order form to the page where you decide whether or not to expedite your order. On this page, you can access estimates of the number of days required for both expedited and standard processing times. It would be nice to have these turnaround times listed in a more convenient spot, as opposed to several pages into the order form.
Rocket Lawyer is a solid option for LLC service. They have a huge volume of customers and significant brand power, and they have positive customer reviews as well. They’re not the ideal choice for all entrepreneurs, of course, so let’s take a look at a couple of scenarios that might clarify just a bit further who they’re right for.
If you’re already interested in their legal services subscription, it’s a solid choice because you can get LLC service as part of their $39.99/month subscription.
If all you want is LLC formation service, there are cheaper places to get the basic service offered by Rocket Lawyer’s $99.99 non-member package. For instance, we’ll form your LLC for free (+ state fee).
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Start your LLC with ZenBusiness
Pricing starts at just $0 + state fee
Frequently Asked Questions About Rocket Lawyer
Rocket Lawyer opened its doors in 2008, and since then they’ve served 25+ million customers. In addition to its customer volume, Rocket Lawyer also receives mostly positive customer feedback. They have thousands of reviews available online, and they maintain strong average rating scores.
It’s normal to be uncertain about which online LLC formation service is the right choice for your unique business. After all, there are a ton of options out there, and each of them has its own set of advantages and disadvantages.
However, we’ve done countless hours of research on this topic, reviewing and comparing all of the best LLC formation services. We invite you to check out some of our comparison guides, which take a head-to-head view of the competition between Rocket Lawyer and its top competitors.
Rocket Lawyer vs. ZenBusiness: ZenBusiness is a more affordable option than Rocket Lawyer. With ZenBusiness, you can get LLC formation service for free (just pay the state’s required fee). Additionally, ZenBusiness offers money-saving LLC formation packages with advanced features, which Rocket Lawyer doesn’t.
Rocket Lawyer’s advantage over ZenBusiness is experience. Rocket Lawyer has served 25+ million customers, which is the highest customer volume in this industry. As for ZenBusiness, we’ve been around since 2017, although we’ve already processed 700,000+ LLC formations. Both companies receive excellent customer reviews, so that area is a toss-up.
Rocket Lawyer vs. Incfile: Incfile is one of only a few companies (along with ZenBusiness and a couple of others) that we know of in this industry that provide LLC formation service free of charge, as long as you pay your state fee.
Customer feedback is a pro for both of these companies, as they both receive strong reviews from their clients. Rocket Lawyer has an experience advantage in this competition, as they do when compared to just about any other company providing online business services.
Rocket Lawyer vs. Northwest Registered Agent: Northwest has personalized support that provides access to their corporate guides, who are always available if you have questions or concerns. While both of these companies receive high-quality customer feedback, Rocket Lawyer has a much higher volume of reviews. Whereas Northwest has around 800 reviews available online, Rocket Lawyer has nearly 10,000 of them, and both companies have similarly positive reputations.
Rocket Lawyer again holds down the experience advantage in this competition. Additionally, Northwest’s offer of a $225 LLC formation package is a bit expensive, even compared to Rocket Lawyer’s $99.99 price point.
Rocket Lawyer vs. LegalZoom: LegalZoom is one of the only companies in this industry that can compete with Rocket Lawyer when it comes to experience, as both companies have served millions of customers.
LegalZoom has LLC formation service available starting at $0, just like we do at ZenBusiness. Much like Rocket Lawyer, this LegalZoom formation package doesn’t include much in the way of additional features. LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer both have extended support hours that can come in handy, and they both receive strong customer feedback.
Unfortunately, we are not aware of any promo codes, discounts, coupons, or sales for Rocket Lawyer’s services.
For the most part, customers seem to be pleased with the support they receive from Rocket Lawyer. They have extended customer service hours from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. ET on weekdays, which can come in handy.
That’s always an option, and some entrepreneurs do just that. The problem with the DIY route is that it can take quite a bit of time due to state-specific compliance requirements. On the other end of the spectrum, some people hire lawyers to form their LLCs, but that’s usually far more expensive than online LLC services are.
In general, reserving a business name before entering the formation process is unnecessary. The only times when you would need to do this are if you’re located in a state like Alabama that requires a name reservation or if you’re not ready to form your business yet, but want to make sure that your name is available when you are.
We called Rocket Lawyer to inquire about these requirements because they don’t list them on their website. We were pleased to learn that they do indeed handle state-specific requirements.
However, Rocket Lawyer charges a $350 publication fee to take care of that requirement, plus government fees and the cost of newspaper advertising. If you’d like to save some money, we’ll provide this service for $200 plus government fees and advertising costs — see our New York publication service page for more details.
If you’d like to talk with Rocket Lawyer representatives over the phone, you can contact them at 877-881-0947. They don’t list a general support email address on their website, but you can fill out their contact form and they’ll email you back as quickly as they can.
Yes and no. While we feel like Rocket Lawyer is good at avoiding pushing unnecessary features and services, they do present multiple opportunities to sign up for their legal services subscription plan.
While it can be a bit annoying if you don’t want this service, the fact that Rocket Lawyer provides a seven-day free trial and provides free formation service for new subscribers means that it’s an interesting offer for many customers.
Rocket Lawyer’s turnaround times vary depending on the requirements of your formation state, from just a few days up to several weeks. In general, their turnaround times are similar to many other LLC formation services.
Yes. There are very few restrictions on who can form an LLC in the United States. You don’t need to be physically present in this country to form one, you don’t need to be a U.S. citizen or resident, etc. If you want to own and operate your own LLC, there aren’t many restrictions to doing so.
Rocket Lawyer offers a wider variety of services than just about any other company in this industry, which is largely due to the fact that they provide many personal services in addition to their business offerings. For example, they can help you create a last will and testament or work with you to draft a prenuptial agreement for your marriage.
As for their business services, they offer assistance with employment and human resources issues, corporate compliance, consultations with vetted business attorneys, a selection of legal documents and business contracts, registered agent service, and more.
We feel like this question is more about your personal preferences than any sort of objective “yes” or “no” answer. For us, we feel like the convenience of having our LLC formation documents and our EIN confirmation form in the same place is worth the expense. However, if you would rather save some money and acquire your own EIN, you can do so for free by contacting the IRS.
Rocket Lawyer’s experience level is its biggest advantage, considering that none of its competitors serve a higher volume of clients than Rocket Lawyer does. As for its disadvantages, its pricing isn’t too impressive if you don’t subscribe to its legal services plan, as its $99.99 offering for LLC or incorporation service is as barebones as it gets.
You can purchase their registered agent service for $149.99 per year, but they don’t offer annual report service, so Rocket Lawyer’s level of assistance with ongoing compliance requirements is less than impressive.
Disclaimer: The content on this page is for information purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, or accounting advice. If you have specific questions about any of these topics, seek the counsel of a licensed professional.
LLC Services Reviewed