Criminal defence marketing is bought under time pressure by people who have never hired a lawyer before, and that shapes everything. The searches happen within hours of an arrest, usually on a phone, often by a family member rather than the defendant. Visibility in the map results, reviews that read like real people, pages that answer the question being asked at that moment, and a phone answered by a human are worth more than anything a brand campaign can buy. This guide explains what a defence marketing programme actually contains, what moves the price, where firms most often break the rules by accident, and how to evaluate an agency on evidence rather than on its own case studies.
What the programme contains
Four components carry almost all of the results. First, the Google Business Profile: complete, accurate, matching your registered practice details, with categories and hours that reflect reality. Google publishes guidelines for representing your business, and the details matter because inaccurate information is both a ranking problem and a trust problem. Second, pages built for the queries people actually type, which are usually a charge plus a place, or a question about what happens next. Third, reviews, which drive both map prominence and the decision to call. Fourth, intake: tracked numbers, after hours coverage and a script somebody has reviewed. Website design, brand work and social presence are downstream of those four and rarely worth funding first. If a proposal leads with a rebrand and treats profile and intake as housekeeping, it is selling what it likes making rather than what produces retained cases.
What moves the price
Market size is the largest factor. A single-office firm in a mid-sized city commonly pays a low four figure monthly retainer for search, content and profile work, with advertising spend separate. Dense metros with several well-funded competitors run considerably higher, because the work becomes sustained content production and reputation building rather than a checklist that can be completed. The second factor is scope: the number of offices, the number of charge types you want pages for, and whether content is written for you or supplied by you. The third is whether paid search is included, which changes both the fee and the required budget. Judge any quote against your own arithmetic rather than against other quotes: how many additional retained cases would cover the annual cost, and is that plausible given your consultation-to-retainer rate. A programme that produces two extra cases a year may be excellent or worthless depending entirely on your fee structure.
Where firms break rules without meaning to
Two rule sets apply at once. Your state bar's rules on communications concerning a lawyer's services bind you, not your vendor, and they govern results claims, testimonials, comparative statements, specialisation language and required disclaimers, with real variation between jurisdictions. Federal endorsement rules apply on top. The Federal Trade Commission's endorsement guidance requires material connections to be disclosed clearly, and its guide for marketers on soliciting and paying for online reviews is direct about incentivised reviews presented as spontaneous and about suppressing negative feedback. The failure mode is almost never deliberate. It is a vendor running a review campaign with a gift card attached, or writing results copy nobody at the firm read before it went live. Prevent both with process: name who approves copy, keep the approvals, ask every candidate what it will not do to generate reviews, and get the answer in the statement of work.
How to vet a candidate
Ask which defence firms the agency currently works with in your market and what its exclusivity policy is in writing, since serving you and the firm across town is selling capacity rather than advantage. Ask for two or three client firms you may contact, then search the terms those firms should own and read their pages before you call, checking whether the work shipped and held rather than whether the case study reads well. Ask references what months one to three looked like. Ask for a disclosed minimum and a breakdown of where the hours go across technical work, content, profile work and reporting. Insist in writing that the website, the content, the Google Business Profile, the call tracking numbers and the analytics history belong to you from day one, and ask what happens to pages built on the agency's platform if you leave. Firms that answer these quickly have been asked before. Firms that deflect are telling you something useful.
Questions people ask about criminal defense law firm marketing
How fast does defence marketing work?
Profile accuracy and review velocity can affect map placement within weeks, which is the fastest lever available. Content aimed at competitive charge-plus-city terms usually takes two to three quarters. Paid search is immediate and expensive. Expect month one to be shipped work and tracking rather than results, and set the real performance conversation at the end of the first quarter.
Do I need a page for every charge type?
You need a page for every charge you actually want to be hired for, written specifically rather than templated. A single page listing twenty offences will rank for none of them, because it answers nobody's question properly. Start with the charges that produce the most revenue and the most calls, then widen as capacity allows.
How should we handle a bad review?
Respond calmly, briefly and without disclosing anything about the matter, and never let a vendor respond in your voice without approval. Confidentiality survives the engagement, and a defensive public reply that reveals case details is a far larger problem than the original review. Agree the response process and the approver before the first review arrives.
Should we buy leads as well?
Purchased leads are usually sold to several firms at once, so you pay to race for a first call and build no asset of your own. Owned visibility compounds. Some firms run both while their own programme matures, then taper the purchased leads. Check any arrangement against your state's rules on fee sharing and referrals before signing.