Rocket Lawyer Legal Advice
LAST UPDATED: December 16, 2021
Terms and Conditions
1. Agreement between you and Rocket Lawyer
We are Rocket Lawyer Incorporated, a Delaware corporation, located at 182 Howard St. #830, San Francisco, California 94105.
Rocket Lawyer is a company authorized to provide legal services, including the practice of law, by the Utah Supreme Court.
Rocket Lawyer is not a law firm. Some of the people who own or manage this company are not lawyers. This means that some services or protections, like attorney-client privilege, may be different from those you could get from a law firm.
3. Our Services
Following an initial consultation, we will deliver to you a quote for our proposed services. The quote will include a description of the services to be provided, a timeline for delivery of services, and a description of the fee charged for the services. Unless specifically stated otherwise, all fees will be fixed and paid up front. After you expressly agree to the quote, we will send you an invoice. By paying our invoice, you agree that these Terms and Conditions govern our engagement by you to provide the services (the "Engagement").
The scope of the Engagement is limited to the description found in the quote provided to you and does not involve any other actual or potential litigation, appeals, arrangements, or transactions that may arise out of this matter.
Our Services are based on the information you give us, so please make sure you tell us everything relevant we need to know. The more accurate and relevant the information, the better the service.
The outcome of any matter is subject to inherent risks and other factors beyond our control; because of this, we cannot make any guarantee or promise concerning the outcome of your Engagement.
To the fullest extent under applicable law, the intellectual property in the product of the Services is owned by Rocket Lawyer, and you alone will have a non-exclusive, perpetual, free of further charge license to use the product so far as is reasonable for the purposes set out in our Engagement.
4. What you can expect from us
We will:
- Communicate with you in plain language;
- Respond to you in a timely manner;
- Provide you with timely progress reports; and
- Obtain your approval before sending out to anyone else any important letters or documents.
Things we can't or won't do:
- Speak to anyone who contacts us on your behalf, unless you've already given us permission to do so;
- Give advice for someone else;
- Guarantee that you'll always speak to the same person when you call us. If you email us, we'll try to make sure the same person advises you, but we can't guarantee this;
- Assist you if your goals are against the law or any regulations.
- Provide advice on:
- Taxation of any sort; we will not be responsible for the effect of taxation on you or otherwise from any document or procedure created by us;
- Financial investment; and
- Matters for which we are not legally allowed to provide advice.
We will advise you according to the law in force when we give our advice. Afterwards, if there is a change in the law, we will not update our work or advice, unless we have agreed to do so under a new Engagement.
5. What we need from you
To ensure that we provide the best service possible, we need you to:
- Provide complete and accurate information about your matter at the outset and any information that comes up while we are completing the work;
- Respond to our communications quickly; and
- Treat us with respect. Any aggressive or unreasonable manner towards any member of Rocket Lawyer will not be tolerated and may result in cancellation of the Services.
6. Your file
In the ordinary course of events, we will not obtain or retain a physical copy of documents from you. However, in the rare circumstance that you provide us with physical documents, upon completion of the Services, we will return to you original documents you have given to us, unless you consent to their destruction.
We will keep an electronic copy of documents for such time as we reasonably judge or as required by law, after which we may destroy them without notice or consent to you. That said, we will not delete documents that you store in your Rocket Lawyer account.
In the course of providing legal services to you, we may receive nonpublic personal information about you or your company, if applicable. All such information will be held in strict confidence and will not be disseminated to any person or entity outside Rocket Lawyer without your consent, unless such disclosure is required under the applicable law.
7. Protecting your personal data
We will protect your personal data in accordance with our privacy policy. By entering into an Engagement with us, you consent to the terms of our privacy policy.
You should be aware that we may store some or all of your files on a variety of platforms, including third-party cloud-based servers. Although we take precautions to make sure these servers are encrypted and secure, there is still a risk that your confidential or privileged information may be disclosed. By entering into an Engagement with us, you consent to and assume the risk for our use of such storage services.
Unless you specifically direct us otherwise, we may use mobile phones or email in the course of the Engagement. Our email may not be encrypted so the use of this form of communication under current technologies may place confidential or privileged information at risk. Similarly, the use of mobile phones may place confidential or privileged information at risk. By entering into an Engagement with us, you consent to and assume the risk for our use of these forms of communication.
8. Attorney-Client Privilege
Generally, information you provide to an attorney is subject to the attorney-client privilege. However, because Rocket Lawyer is owned and managed by people who are not lawyers, the protection of the attorney-client privilege may be different than what you would have with a law firm.
Additionally, we may be presented with situations where we have an independent ethical duty to reveal privileged information, such as if (i) it involves the commission of illegal or fraudulent acts during the course of your Engagement, (ii) it involves the intent to commit a crime, or (iii) we are required to disclose the information by law or court order
9. Your Fees
Unless expressly agreed to otherwise, Rocket Lawyer operates under a fixed fee structure. This means that you will only be charged for the amount listed in your quote or as otherwise agreed by us in writing for any further Services. The amount you pay to us is for only the work we have agreed within the scope of the Engagement, and we will not be obliged to do anything beyond that work, unless we separately agree in writing with you another Engagement and you have paid the applicable fee to us.
You agree to make all payments to us as described in the quote.
We will not start any Service, and the Engagement will not begin, until we have received full payment for that Service. This means that sometimes a delay may occur in the start of the Services.
Money paid up front for agreed fixed fees will be held and used as part of our own money in our business account - an account that is not a trust account, as an account containing client money would be.
10. Costs and Expenses
In the course of providing the Service, we may incur expenses for services such as printing, photocopying, delivery services, etc. The actual expenses will depend on the Services that we provide to you. All reasonable expenses have been anticipated and are included in your fee.
In the unlikely event that there are, without our fault, further expenses, we will contact you immediately to discuss how you would like to proceed, and you might have to pay the amount of such disbursements in advance of our being able to continue with the Services, otherwise we may have to delay or stop the Services. Money paid for expenses will be held and used as part of our own money in our business account - an account that is not a trust account, as an account containing client money would be.
11. Waiver
Because of Rocket Lawyer's size and geographical reach, it is possible that we may now or in the future assist parties in matters in which their interests are adverse to your interests. You hereby agree that we may continue to represent or may in the future represent new or existing clients in any matter that is not substantially related to our work for you, even if the interests of such clients in those matters may be adverse to you (directly or indirectly).
If Rocket Lawyer undertakes a conflicting representation, although there is a risk that we may not be able to exercise professional judgment fully in your interest, we believe that such risk is minimal and that we will be able to continue to represent you competently and diligently. In the event that an actual conflict arises, we may need to withdraw as counsel, which may result in increased expenses and delay. This risk, too, is minimal, as we will not undertake any representation that is directly adverse to your interests in an ongoing and active Engagement.
We encourage you to consult with independent counsel regarding this waiver, or any other terms of the Engagement, before agreeing to an Engagement. By hiring us for an Engagement, you confirm that you have had an opportunity to consult with independent counsel regarding the terms of this waiver, and have either done so or decided to proceed without doing so.
12. Stopping the Service
You can stop our work immediately by emailing us; we may require you to describe your reasons for termination. Once you have paid for the Services, refunds will only be provided at our sole discretion.
We may by email notice suspend or stop the work immediately for good cause, subject to an obligation to give you reasonable notice to arrange for alternative representation. Good cause to withdraw includes, but is not limited to:
- Your failure to honor the terms of the Engagement;
- Your failure to cooperate or follow our advice on a material matter;
- Circumstances where our continued representation would be unlawful or unethical; or
- Any other reason permitted by the applicable ethics rules.
For situations where we have stopped the work, you may be entitled to a refund of the fair portion of the fees which represent the work not yet completed.
13. Governing Law
The Engagement, these terms and conditions, and all matters arising out of or relating to the Engagement, whether sounding in contract, tort, or statute, are governed by, and construed in accordance with, the laws of the State of Utah, United States of America, without giving effect to the conflict of laws provisions thereof to the extent such principles or rules would require or permit the application of the laws of any jurisdiction other than those of the State of Utah.