Rocket Lawyer Reframes Its Message Around the Full Legal Matter
Rocket Lawyer is broadening how it describes its role in customers’ legal needs, moving beyond a longstanding association with creating legal documents. The communications challenge, according to Chief Growth Officer Deborah Holstein, is to help people understand that the company can support a wider range of legal matters while making clear when attorney advice is needed.
The shift reflects a gap between the legal help people may need and their ability to identify the right solution. Holstein said many individuals and solo and micro business owners do not feel they know enough about the law or their specific situation to decide what kind of help is appropriate. Some would prefer to work with an attorney if that option were available to them, she said.
Documents remain central to legal protection, and document creation is where Rocket Lawyer began. But Holstein said authoring a new document is appropriate for some matters, not all of them. The company’s revised message therefore focuses on the full legal matter rather than only on a particular product or service.
Messaging from the customer’s problem
Rather than asking prospective customers to start with a predefined solution, Rocket Lawyer has encouraged them to bring questions and documents they are unsure how to handle. Holstein cited a small business owner receiving a customer contract and wondering whether to sign it as an example of a need the company had not previously addressed in the same way.
She described the imbalance that can arise when a solo or micro business owner negotiates with a much larger company whose in-house attorneys prepared the contract. A business owner may feel intimidated or uncertain about a clause, such as an indemnity provision, and may not know what to do next. The messaging aims to make that uncertainty a reason to seek help, rather than assuming the person already understands which legal product to choose.
Rocket Lawyer had research indicating demand for help with these situations, Holstein said, but the company still needed to test whether people would respond to the expanded invitation. She said users began sharing documents and seeking insights from AI, while many also chose to ask questions or speak with an attorney. The response helped the company observe how people approached different parts of the experience, though Holstein did not provide figures for usage or results.
Clarifying the role of AI and attorneys
In legal services, the distinction between general legal information and legal advice is central to how Rocket Lawyer explains its offering. Holstein said that when someone wants to understand how the law applies to their own circumstances and what they should do, a human attorney is needed to consider both the person’s situation and the law.
She characterized the customer proposition as a matter of choice: people can use AI for information and can connect with an attorney during the process. Holstein also said lawyers are involved in training and prompting the company’s AI. She emphasized that the goal is to address the legal matter, not to steer every user toward a single route.
That distinction is also a trust issue. Holstein said legal services cannot rely simply on a response that is likely to be correct; customers need an answer they can trust. For marketers communicating about AI in a sensitive category, the company’s approach underscores the need to explain both what the technology does and where human expertise fits.
Building alignment and evaluating the shift
Holstein said internal agreement took ongoing work rather than a single presentation. She has shared customer and market insights in different conversations and adapted how the problem is discussed for teams including operations, finance and product. Her view is that involving more colleagues in understanding the customer problem makes it more likely they will help shape the response.
She also recommended bringing customer insights into routine business discussions, such as copy reviews, product-experience reviews and general updates. In her view, communications and marketing leaders are close to customers and to how they receive information, and should share what they are seeing early and often while tying those observations to business fundamentals.
Rocket Lawyer is watching customer acquisition cost, return visits and the activities people undertake when they return. It is also examining whether customers use multiple aspects of the experience rather than only one. Holstein said the company is working to identify a limited number of legal matters that will anchor investment, given that its resources are not unlimited.
The measures reflect a broader marketing question behind the repositioning: whether a more complete description of the service attracts people with needs the company can address and helps them find an appropriate form of support. For Rocket Lawyer, explaining the expanded role depends on keeping the customer’s legal problem at the center, while making the boundaries between AI-generated information and attorney advice understandable.
