Which is better LegalZoom or Rocket Lawyer?

Rocket Lawyer: Best for Small Businesses

Rocket Lawyer is an all-encompassing legal service that offers all the essentials ranging from legal advice to legal documents and business registration.

Rocket Lawyer has a monthly subscription model, which means that for a low monthly fee you gain access to business attorneys and unlimited legal documents. This model can be great for small companies that require legal documents on a regular basis. However, for businesses with a simple operation, a monthly subscription may not make fiscal sense.

Rocket Lawyer Features

Rocket Lawyer offers legal documents and services for businesses, business formation, real estate, and family matters. For the sake of practicality, we are going to focus on their services for business and business formation.

Business Services:

• Business registration: Rocket Lawer will register your limited liability company (LLC), S corporation, or C corporation.
• Intellectual Property: Rocket Lawyer can help with trademark and copyright submissions.
• Legal documents: their platform helps create and customize your business and personal legal documents with an intuitive platform.
• Legal Advice: If you have legal questions, you can ask an attorney a business question or discuss legal matters over a 30-minute consultation for a flat fee.
• Great Customer Service Monday through Friday 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Pacific time.

Rocket Lawyer Pricing

Rocket Lawyer’s pricing is simple: you’re either a member or not. If you are a member you get most features for $39.99/month. If you are not a member, you have to pay full price every time you need a legal document.

For $39.99 per month you get:

• Free Business Registration
• Unlimited Legal Documents
• Unlimited Legal Questions
• Free 30-minute Attorney consultation
• 40% discount on ongoing Attorney
• Registered agent: $122.50 per year

For Non-Members:

• Business Registration is $99 per LLC
• Legal Questions are $49.99 each
• Legal Documents are $39.99 each
• Registered Agent Service is $149.99 per year
• 30-minute Attorney Consultations are $59.99

Reasons To Like Rocket Lawyer

If your business requires continuous legal services to operate, such as attorney advice or legal documents, Rocket Lawyer is the best, most affordable option. Rocket Lawyer’s platform is very intuitive, so don’t expect to have any major complications when creating legal documents. This is reflected in Rocket Lawyer’s 4.9 out of 5 stars rating on Fit Small Business.

LegalZoom: Best for a Diverse Selection of Legal Services

Similar to Rocket Lawyer, LegalZoom is another online legal service designed to be a “one-stop-shop” for a business’s legal needs. Small businesses pay a low fixed rate for several types of legal work. Founded in 2001, LegalZoom has helped over 4 million customers with business registration, legal documents, and lawyers’ advice.

LegalZoom has by far the best user experience out of the competition. But if you happen to have issues with their platform, LegalZoom boasts a formidable customer service, which includes weekends from 7 a.m. Pacific time to 4 p.m. Pacific time.

LegalZoom Features

• Business registration: Register your LLC, C-corp, or elect your business as S-corp for tax purposes
• Legal documents: The software to create and customize your legal docs is fast and easy to use
• Legal advice: For a monthly fee, they will connect you with vetted small business attorneys
• Intellectual property (IP): LegalZoom provides several IP services including copyright, trademark, and patent submissions
• Customer service: Monday thru Friday 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific time and Saturday 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Pacific time

LegalZoom Pricing

• Business registration: $79 to $349 depending on the state and package
• Legal documents: $59 per document or $7.95 per month for unlimited legal documents
• Legal document review: $39 per document review
• Attorney consultations: $375 per year for unlimited 30-minute sessions
• Registered agent: $299 per year (not included in LLC formation package)
• Intellectual property: $179 to $2,400 per application

Reasons To Like LegalZoom

LegalZoom has amazing user experience and an intuitive platform. Registering a business and LLC formation is a breeze, all you have to do is answer a set of simple questions.

It also helps if you learn about the legal services with well written educational resources. For example, throughout the business incorporation process, they explain confusing words and legal concepts.

Check our Incfile vs LegalZoom review to learn which legal service is the best for LLC formation.

LegalZoom vs Rocket Lawyer: Things in Common

Pricing: LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer have very similar pricing. Both platforms fill the void in the market between doing it yourself and hiring a professional lawyer. However, it is important to mention that Rocket Lawyer is a bit more upfront about there pricing.

Satisfaction Guaranteed: unlike most of their competitors, Legalzoom has a satisfaction guarantee that you can leverage at any point within the first 60 days since purchase. Rocket Lawyer has similar policies in place, but they cover the first 30 days since purchase.

Customer Support: Speaking of not going it alone, one of the biggest benefits of hiring an LLC formation service is that they have customer service reps who are available to help solve your problems. If you have questions or concerns, they’re just a phone call or email away.

Experience: Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom have over 15 years of experience each and millions of satisfied customers. You are in safe hands with Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom.

Educational: If you need additional assistance, or just want to learn more about the legal aspects of your business, both Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom include a plethora of information on most issues that might affect or benefit your company.

Rocket Lawyer vs LegalZoom: Side by Side

Pricing

At the time of writing, Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom have essentially the same pricing for LLC formation at 99.99 and 99 respectively. Their prices for LLC formation are not the best if you’re only looking for an LLC formation service–we recommend IncFile.

Features

Both Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom offer basic LLC business formation legal services. These services do the basic paperwork preparation and filing in the state of your choosing. LegalZoom does add a banking resolution to help you open a business savings and checkings account. Rocket Lawyer’s exclusive addition is a hard copy of your business formation documents.

The upsetting aspect of Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom is that neither legal service offers registered agent service with their formation packages. To help you understand why a registered agent is so important, let’s go over its definition:

“A registered agent is a responsible third-party who is located in the same state in which a business entity was established and who is designated to receive service of process notices, correspondence from the Secretary of State, and other official government notifications, usually tax forms and notice of lawsuits, on behalf of the corporation or LLC.” – LegalZoom

For legal services that include a Registered Agent, read more on our Incfile Review.

Experience

With over 4 million clients since they were founded back in 2001, LegalZoom has enviable experience in legal services. But you know who doesn’t envy LegalZoom? Rocket Lawyer. They have served over 20 million customers since 2008. Yes, you read that right: 20 million satisfied customers.

Customer Support

Business owners know that time is valuable and they shouldn’t be spending time with unnecessary paperwork or minor issues. So, how well do their customer service fair?

Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom are such large businesses that it’s not surprising that their customer service can be a hit or miss. Despite having wide-reaching support networks, it’s understandable that due to the sheer volume of clients some unsatisfied customers slip through the cracks.

LegalZoom is available Monday to Friday from 10 am to 8 pm ET and weekends from 10 am to 7 pm ET. Rocket Lawyers representatives are available from 9 am to 9 pm ET on weekdays.

Turnaround

Turnaround time for LLC formation is tricky business (no pun intended). Rocket Lawyer’s estimates vary by state, whereas LegalZoom bases their turnarounds on the level of service you purchase.

• LegalZoom’s Economy package takes 30 business days
• Standard takes about 15 business days
• Express Gold is ready in 7-10 business days

Generally speaking, the difference between these two services is negligible unless you pay extra for LegalZoom’s Express Gold package.

Customer Reviews

LegalZoom has thousands of customer reviews online, and while te positive reviews outway the negative, it is not by a significant margin. LegalZoom has satisfied plenty of business owners but they also get a fair share of complaints.

Rocket Lawyer does not suffer from the same issue. In fact, Rocket Lawyer’s reviews are a big pro for the company. With more than 3,000 reviews online and a higher percentage of positive reviews, Rocket Lawyer takes the win over LegalZoom.

Ease of Use

Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom are by far the easiest online legal services to use, as their platform can’t get easier to use. Deciding which is better is almost a toss-up. LegalZoom may have the advantage over Rocket Lawyer for its more modern design.

Additional Services

Both companies offer a very similar selection of legal services such as a registered agent service, LLC operating agreements, foreign qualification, and a lot more.

Business owners are not the only ones that can make use of their legal services, as both companies offer personal services such as divorce papers, last will and testament, and power of attorney. If you have questions or need further consultation, they can get you in contact with a certified lawyer.

If you are looking for a one-stop-shop, LegalZoom has the edge as they are the company with the greatest selection of online legal services.

Which Is the LLC Formation Service for You?

Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom are two of the best LLC online legal formation services online and have in common most of the services they offer such as a registered agent.

So which one is better for you? The answer, as usual, is not as simple as picking one. Below we go over the different scenarios for which each company excels.

LegalZoom is Best For:

LegalZoom is a top pick for small business owners who can’t lose valuable time getting their questions answered, as LegalZoom has extended service hours.

Rocket Lawyer is Best For:

Small Business owners that value great customer service and an unrivaled client volume. If you want reliability over the modern experience of LegalZoom, Rocket Lawyer is for you.

Final Verdict

While both of the LLC services in this comparison offer good overall value and have formed thousands of businesses, we think Rocket Lawyer is the better option.

However, in the larger picture, neither of these LLC services are our top pick. We highly recommend checking out our list of the top LLC services to see which is the best option available or getting a closer look at ZenBusiness.