Rocket Lawyer, a company that has found a wealth of success in the US, is introducing its £25 per month legal services into the UK, in an effort to help prospective business owners to get onto their feet.
Creating legal documents for the purposes of business ownership is often found to be a strenuous process, owing to the high hourly rates charged by City lawyers.
This new service aims to streamline the process by providing an online platform which allows the user to create legal documents via a host of networked lawyers over the internet.
The service allows the users to create all the legal documents that are vital for any business operation from employment contracts, confidentiality agreements and health and safety policies to shareholders and lease agreements. Users can create, download, print, edit, share and ‘e-sign’ all documents at any time.
B&C Distributor’s Ian Walker caught up with Mark Edwards, Vice President of Rocket Lawyer, to find out a little bit more about the company:
IW: To what extent do you believe a service like this could revolutionise business start-ups?
ME: We believe there are significant savings to be made for small business start-ups who may be worried about escalating fees and are intimidated by the prospect of dealing with anything legal. Interestingly these are our most popular legal documents, which proves that more and more people are starting out small and working their way up. Rocket Lawyer provides a fantastic solution for small businesses and entrepreneurs as we take away a lot of the legal burden they have to endure when starting up.
How has your US success shaped the structure of your UK operation?
Rocket Lawyer is already one of the fastest growing companies in the USA and is now the most widely used online legal service in America. We hope to emulate the success of our US counterpart and grow our business rapidly in the UK.
Have there been any hurdles in transferring the system from the US to the UK?
The answer to this is simply no. We have found the performance of the UK model is actually very similar to the US model so growth has been steady as expected. There has definitely been a rise in customers searching for legal services online which has increased demand.
How many businesses do you believe will use the service?
Every small business and entrepreneur in the UK will need legal documents at some point so there is reason to use Rocket Lawyer. With this in mind, there is the potential for millions of businesses and entrepreneurs to use Rocket Lawyer’s services. We’ve also noticed that there has been a rise in ‘bedroom entrepreneurs’ creating small businesses that they hope will expand to larger operations, so the demand is strong and growing.
What plans do you have for the future for Rocket Lawyer?
We have just introduced a three-day free legal service in a bid to help entrepreneurs and small businesses find their legal feet more easily and you can’t get more affordable than free!
Being able to take advantage of such an offer will allow such businesses to jump those initial legal hurdles without fuss so they can simply focus on their day-to-day business needs.
This year, over 80,000 documents have been created so the demand is there. We also want to branch out to Scotland and Northern Ireland to increase our market. We are mainly focusing on small businesses and start-up companies but by the end of the year we want to create more documents for consumers.
Mark Edwards, Vice President and General Manager of Rocket Lawyer UK, added: “We know that access to the current legal system is daunting and expensive. Increasingly, people are turning to the web to find answers to their legal issues, so we are proud to be introducing to the UK for the first time a complete online legal service that is both affordable and simple.”
By Ian Walker
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