Criminal defense marketing: SEO and ads for the call after an arrest

Criminal-defense marketing is built around one moment: someone has just been arrested, and a person who cares about them is searching for a lawyer, often at night. We run SEO, AI search and ads for criminal-defense firms so that your firm is found, reached and trusted in that moment, and we judge it on retained clients from your own records.

How criminal-defense clients find a lawyer

• The searcher is often not the client. A parent, a spouse or a friend searches while the person arrested is in custody. Your pages and your intake have to work for that caller.
• It happens at any hour. Arrests and bookings don’t keep office hours, so neither do the searches. An ad that runs at 2 a.m. needs someone who answers at 2 a.m.
• The questions are urgent and local. How to get someone out of jail in this county, what happens at the first court date, whether to talk to the police. A firm that answers those plainly, for that county, earns the call.
• The charge shapes everything. DUI, assault, drug and domestic-violence cases differ in urgency, in fees and in who calls. Pages, ads and values are built by charge.

Jail calls, collect calls and the minutes that matter

When the client calls from custody, a few practical details decide whether your firm ever hears from them.

• Collect calls need a person. Calls from jails are usually collect, debit or prepaid, and a collect call connects only when the person called takes “affirmative action” to accept the charges (FCC). A phone menu, an auto-attendant or voicemail can lose that call entirely. The line a client is likely to call should reach a live person.
• Attorney lines can be kept unrecorded, if registered. Jail calls are generally monitored and recorded. Some facilities let lawyers register their numbers so calls to them aren’t. King County, Washington, for example, says calls with lawyers “are not recorded, provided that they have registered their phone number on our ‘Do Not Record’ list” (King County). Rules vary by facility; your firm should check each jail its clients are held in.
• Tracking numbers need care. If you use call-tracking numbers, every number a client might dial from jail must ring through to a person, and any number you register with a jail should be the one that does.
• DUI deadlines start at arrest. Many DUI clients don’t know they have days, not weeks, to fight a license suspension: 10 days to request a DMV hearing in California (California DMV), 15 days from notice in Texas (Texas DPS), and 10 days in Florida (Florida HSMV). Intake asks the arrest date first, and pages say so plainly.

What Google and Meta allow

Local Services Ads for criminal defense

Google’s US Local Services categories include criminal and DUI lawyer services (Google). Google weighs responsiveness in its rankings and says missed calls may count against it (Google). For a criminal-defense firm, that makes after-hours coverage a ranking factor as well as a service one. We match your listed hours to your real coverage and alert your team within minutes of any missed call. See Local Services Ads.

Intake for criminal defense

• Who is calling. Intake records whether the caller is the client or someone calling for them, and follows your firm’s rules about who can speak for the client and who signs.
• Conflicts first. Co-defendants and alleged victims are checked before anyone discusses details.
• The essentials, fast. The charge, the county, custody status, the next court date and, for DUI, the arrest date.
• Fees explained plainly. Criminal defense usually runs on flat fees by charge. Callers want to know the number and what it covers.
• Graded as coaching. A sample of calls is graded each month, including after-hours calls. See intake monitoring.

Signed cases and values

A signed case in criminal defense is a retained client: a signed fee agreement for a matter, counted once, whoever pays. Many sign within a day of the first call, which gives bidding a fast, clean signal. Values come from your own fees by charge, grouped into a few bands, so a felony defense and a first DUI aren’t bid as if they were worth the same.

Our two pillars for criminal-defense firms

State rules that shape criminal-defense marketing

• No promises of outcomes. No “charges dropped” or “guaranteed dismissal” claims, anywhere.
• Certification words are controlled. In Texas, “Board Certified” appears only for lawyers certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization or an accredited body (State Bar of Texas). Other states restrict “specialist” and “expert” too.
• Results only where allowed, with the disclaimers your state requires, and only with your attorney’s approval.
• No contact with people who didn’t ask. We never contact arrested people or their families. Your ads answer people who search.

The basics for each state are in the lawyer advertising rules by state. Your counsel and your bar decide.

What we never do for criminal-defense firms

• Target people by arrest, charge or criminal history, or upload any of it.
• Advertise bail services or anything Google treats as one.
• Run ads at hours when no one answers.
• Promise outcomes, or publish results your state doesn’t allow.
• Contact anyone on your firm’s behalf.