Google Ads for criminal defense lawyers
Judge your ads by signed cases, not calls.
Google counts a 20-second hang-up and a $15,000 felony retainer as the same conversion. I connect every click and call to the case it became, then teach Google to find more of the cases that pay.
Clean, tracked, qualified leads within 30 days. A straight answer on profit in 90. One criminal defense firm per city, 12 firms at most.
| Lead | Google says | Signed fee |
|---|---|---|
| Call, 0:20Hung up before intake | 1 conversion | $0 |
| Call, 4:10Charge is in Georgia | 1 conversion | $0 |
| Form, 11:42 pmFelony drug possession | 1 conversion | $15,000 |
Illustration of a typical day. Real results are below.
Sound familiar?
Most criminal defense ad accounts are optimized for the wrong number.
These came straight out of a real criminal defense account. If two or three of them describe your firm, your ads are probably costing more than they should.
Calls you can’t take
Charges in another state, people looking for a different firm by name, and matters you don’t handle. You pay for every one.
Reports full of clicks
Your agency sends impressions and “conversions.” Nobody can tell you which keyword produced your last retainer.
More budget, same revenue
You raised spend and the phone rang more, but signed fees barely moved. Volume went up, value didn’t.
A calendar full of small cases
Twenty $2,000 matters and four $20,000 matters both fill a month. Only one of them hits your number.
Leads that go cold overnight
People call after an arrest, often at night. Callers who aren’t reached quickly rarely sign. They call the next firm.
No source, no fee in Clio
New matters get created without a lead source or a fee. Without those two fields, nobody can prove what the ads earned.
Case study
Eleven months with Amari Law Firm, a two-attorney criminal defense practice in Birmingham, Alabama.
Flat-fee firm, owned by Johnny Amari. I was the only paid media manager: strategy, build, tracking and reporting across Google Search, Local Services Ads, Display and Bing.
Revenue is the flat fee on each signed matter, taken from the firm’s case management system, not Google’s conversion count. Leads that couldn’t be traced to a source were left out, so these numbers are conservative. September 2025 to August 2026.
Big cases decide the month
The best month brought in $89,500, and 53% of it came from three matters worth $10,000 or more. Weak months signed just as many cases at $2,000 to $3,000 each.
Spend and revenue don’t rise together
The $24,085 month returned $53,250. The $4,979 month returned $37,500. More budget bought more calls, not more value.
Quoted isn’t signed
Pending engagements turned into roughly a quarter to a third of their quoted value. I stopped using the pipeline to justify bigger budgets.
Revenue lags clicks by one to three months
Recent months always look worse than they end up. Budget decisions get made on months that have had time to mature.
| When | Change | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| May 2026 | Paused broad “criminal attorney” keywords after ranking every keyword by revenue per lead | Budget moved from keywords returning about 2× to keywords returning about 4× |
| Jun 4, 2026 | Added 100+ competitor names as negative keywords | Fewer calls meant for other firms |
| Jun 4, 2026 | Rebuilt the DUI campaign around the DUI searches that actually signed | Replaced keywords with zero signed cases in their history |
| Jun 17, 2026 | Merged four overlapping campaigns and moved to exact match | Weekly spend down 38%; cost per conversion down 65% in week one |
| Jul 2026 | Sent each charge to its own page (domestic violence searches had been landing on the expungement page) | People landed on a page about their charge |
| Ongoing | Tightened the service area, excluded ZIP codes that never convert, filtered spam forms | Fewer out-of-state and junk leads |
How it works
From “we got calls” to “this keyword signed $40,000 in felonies.”
Free account review
On a 30-minute call we go through your search terms, call recordings and what you signed last quarter. You leave knowing where the money is leaking, whether you hire me or not.
Stop paying for calls you can’t take
Geography, competitor names, charges you don’t handle and spam all get shut off in the first two weeks. Each charge gets sent to the page that matches it.
Connect every call to its case
CallRail tags each call and form with the click that produced it. When a matter signs in Clio, its fee goes back to Google Ads as a “Signed Case” conversion.
Bid for case value
Once enough signed cases flow back, Google stops buying the cheapest calls and starts finding the callers most likely to retain you for a serious charge.
Report in your language
Every month you see cost per signed case and fees by charge type and keyword. I also listen to intake calls and tell you what I hear.
Your monthly report
- Signed cases and fees from adsby channel
- Ad spend per signed caseby campaign
- Fees by charge typeDUI, drug, assault, theft, expungement
- Keywords that signed vs. keywords that only rangrevenue per lead
- Calls you paid for but couldn’t takewith the fix
- Intake call notesmissed calls, speed to answer
“I met Henry as a marketing novice and I asked him for extra attention as I learn the marketing process. He has exceeded my expectations with his level of availability, communication and his support. I own a small law firm and I started seeing the benefits of hiring Henry after just one month.”
Fit
Who this is for
A good fit
- Criminal defense and DUI firms spending at least $5,000 a month on ads, or ready to
- Owners who want to know what each signed case cost
- Someone answers the phone quickly, nights and weekends included
- You’ll enter the lead source and fee when a matter signs
Not a fit
- Firms shopping for the cheapest cost per lead
- Practices that can’t answer or return calls within the hour
- Anyone who wants a long contract instead of results
- A firm in a city where I already represent another criminal defense practice
Pricing
Two plans. The fee is small next to one felony retainer.
At Amari Law Firm, ads cost about $1,049 per signed case, and the average case brought in about $3,500 in fees. One average signed case covers a month of Standard management.
Standard
$1,500/monthor 10% of ad spend, whichever is greater
- Call tracking tied to the keyword behind every call
- Signed cases and fees tracked from Clio back to the keyword
- Weekly search term and negative keyword work
- Reporting and strategy calls every two weeks
- Next-business-day response
Growth
10% of ad spendfor firms where paid search is a main source of cases
- Everything in Standard
- Bidding on signed-case value, sent to Google from your case management system
- Ongoing ad and landing page tests, with results written up
- Weekly reporting and strategy calls
- Same-day response
First term 90 days, then month-to-month with 30 days’ notice. If you don’t have clean, tracked, qualified leads within 30 days, you don’t pay for that month.
Ad spend is paid directly to Google. One criminal defense firm per city. See full pricing details
Guides
Free guides for criminal defense firms
What a signed case really costs
Cost per signed case from 140 defense cases, and what drove it up or down.
The 28-point Google Ads audit
The checklist I use on every defense account, from tracking to intake.
Local Services Ads for defense lawyers
How one firm got a 5.5× return, including monthly lead disputes.
Track signed cases from your ads
The CallRail and Clio setup that tells Google which clicks became clients.
Questions
Before you book
Do you only work with criminal defense firms?
Yes. Criminal defense and DUI only. The searches, the urgency, the flat-fee pricing and the intake problems are different from personal injury or family law, and I’d rather know one practice area deeply.
Do you work with my competitors?
No. I work with one criminal defense firm per city and 12 firms at most. Once I work with your firm, I won’t manage ads for another criminal defense practice competing for the same searches. If your city is already taken, I’ll tell you on the first call.
Do I need CallRail or Clio?
Call tracking is required, because calls are most of your leads. CallRail is what I use. Clio Grow or Manage works best for sending signed cases back to Google, and other case management systems can work through Zapier or a weekly spreadsheet.
Is there a long-term contract?
No long-term contract. The first term is 90 days, because cases often sign one to three months after the first call. After that it’s month-to-month with 30 days’ notice. If you don’t have clean, tracked, qualified leads within 30 days, you don’t pay for that month.
Do you manage Local Services Ads too?
Yes. At Amari Law Firm, LSA was the most efficient paid channel at a 5.5× return. That includes the monthly review that disputes invalid leads for credit.
What about state bar advertising rules?
Ad copy is written to stay within your state bar’s rules on attorney advertising: no guarantees of outcomes and no misleading claims. You approve every ad before it runs.
How fast will I see results?
Clean, tracked, qualified leads within 30 days. A straight answer on profit takes about 90 days, because cases often sign one to three months after the first call.
Free account review
Find out which of your keywords actually sign cases.
Thirty minutes, no obligation. Share view-only access beforehand and I’ll bring a full audit to the call. I work with one criminal defense firm per city and 12 firms at most, so the first firm to sign in a city keeps it.
Or call Henry directly: 612-203-3591