Criminal Defense Law Firm Marketing
Criminal Defense Marketing
For the Call After an Arrest.
Someone was arrested last night, and a parent or partner is searching for a lawyer before the first court date. We build the charge and courthouse pages, profiles and campaigns that make your firm the one they reach, and the intake that answers when they do.
27,100
Monthly searches for “criminal defense attorney near me”
18,100
Monthly searches for “dui lawyer near me”
14
Keyword difficulty for “criminal lawyer near me,” out of 100
Source: Semrush US database, monthly searches and keyword difficulty, October 2026
Where Defense Marketing Loses Clients
The Search Happens at 2am. Most Defense Sites Answer at 9.
Criminal defense clients decide in hours, under stress, and often through a family member. They want to know someone will pick up, that the lawyer knows the courthouse and that nobody will hear about it. Most defense marketing answers none of that.
A single “criminal defense” page for every charge.
A first DUI, a federal drug indictment and a domestic violence charge bring different clients, different fees and different urgency. One generic page cannot rank for any of them or speak to the person who searched.
The person searching is not the client.
Calls often come from a spouse or parent while the accused is still in custody. Pages written only for the defendant miss the family member asking what happens at the first appearance and how quickly a lawyer can get involved.
“Charges dismissed” banners with no context.
Results shown as a promise invite exactly the unjustified expectation that attorney advertising rules restrict. Specific, checkable facts about your trial work persuade better and survive a bar complaint.
Calling yourself a DUI specialist without the certificate.
In most states a lawyer can only claim certification as a specialist from an approved certifying body, named in the ad. “Specialist” copy written by a marketer who never checked becomes a compliance problem.
A review strategy that ignores privacy.
Many defense clients would rather never mention their case in public, so review counts grow slowly. Map pack strategy has to lean on profile completeness, proximity and attorney credibility as much as volume.
Ads built on audiences Google treats as sensitive.
Information that someone has committed or been accused of a crime is a sensitive category under Google’s customer data policies. Campaigns that try to follow site visitors with arrest-themed ads run straight into it.
What We Do
Criminal Defense Marketing, Charge by Charge
Six disciplines, each organized around the charges you defend and the courthouses where you appear.
How Defense Search Works
What Makes Criminal Defense Marketing Different
Fee rules, specialist rules, ad restrictions and the courthouse map shape defense search more than any ranking factor. These are the specifics we plan around.
Fees
No Contingency, So Fee Questions Come Early
ABA Model Rule 1.5(d) bars a contingent fee for representing a defendant in a criminal case. Defense clients pay up front or in stages, and they search for prices: “how much does a dui lawyer cost” has a keyword difficulty of just 4. A fee page that explains how you price by charge is an easy ranking and a strong filter for intake.
Specialists
Certification Claims Have to Name the Certifier
Under ABA Model Rule 7.2(c), which many states still number 7.4(d), a lawyer may claim certification as a specialist only from an organization approved by a state authority or accredited by the ABA, and must name it. In Texas, the Texas Board of Legal Specialization certifies criminal law for five years at a time. If your attorneys hold that kind of credential, it belongs at the top of the page.
Ad Policy
Alleged Crimes Are a Sensitive Data Category
Google’s customer data policies list the commission or alleged commission of a crime as sensitive information, and Google has banned ads for bail bond services since July 2018. Defense campaigns are built on search intent and location, with copy that steers clear of bail bond offers.
Geography
The Courthouse Draws the Map
Defense clients care which court the case is in and whether the lawyer knows it. That makes the county or federal district the natural unit for pages and campaigns, far more than the city a firm happens to be located in.
AI Search
Business Profiles Carry the AI Answer
In our September 2026 ledger, the AI Overview for “best criminal defense lawyer San Francisco” named firms using nothing but their Business Profile cards: rating, review count, address and hours. For defense firms, the profile is the AI search work that matters most.
Ad Rules
Results Copy Has to Set Fair Expectations
State versions of Rule 7.1 restrict statements likely to create unjustified expectations about results. A dismissal or acquittal can be described, but with the context your state requires. Specific facts, like the courts you appear in and how many jury trials you have tried, carry more weight anyway.
Defendant and Family Search Demand
The Searches Made After an Arrest
National monthly searches and keyword difficulty for the charges a defense firm builds pages around. Several high-volume defense terms carry low difficulty, which is rare in legal search.
General Defense
- criminal defense attorney near me27,100/mo · KD 18
- criminal lawyer near me18,100/mo · KD 14
- federal criminal defense attorney6,600/mo · KD 30
DUI & DWI
- dui lawyer near me18,100/mo · KD 40
- dui attorney near me12,100/mo · KD 30
- dwi lawyer near me9,900/mo · KD 62
- how much does a dui lawyer cost480/mo · KD 4
Other Charges
- drug possession lawyer5,400/mo · KD 7
- domestic violence lawyer near me4,400/mo · KD 13
- traffic lawyer near me6,600/mo · KD 13
Record Relief
- expungement lawyer near me880/mo · KD 9
Source: Semrush US database, monthly searches and keyword difficulty, October 2026
How We Work
How a Criminal Defense Engagement Runs
- 01
Map charges to courthouses
We list the charges you want more of, the ones you decline, and every court you appear in, then check who holds the map pack and page one for each charge in each county.
- 02
Make sure someone answers
Intake hours, after-hours answering, callback alerts and a Business Profile with accurate hours. Defense calls do not wait until morning, and ad spend outside staffed hours is mostly wasted.
- 03
Build charge, court and fee pages
One page per charge and county, a plain explanation of your pricing, and next-step guides for families, each reviewed by your attorneys against your state’s advertising rules. Paid search covers priority charges while the pages rank.
- 04
Report on retained cases
Calls and forms tied to charge, county and source, so you see which searches become retained cases and what each one costs.
Working with Bryan Passanisi
“Bryan makes things happen and has an incredible attention to detail on all of the small SEO tweaks that add up to big results.”
Jean Kim Hahn, Senior Director Global Marketing, MiniMed
“Bryan takes the time to educate other business partners on SEO. Because of that, more integrated branded ideas were able to be executed.”
David Nielsen, Lead SEO, Genentech
“Bryan has an unbelievable drive to excel at everything he does. He thinks through all the approaches, identifies those most likely to yield the most impressive results, executes quickly, analyzes the results, communicates the insights and builds upon them.”
Mike Berry, Ex Adobe, eBay, PayPal
The Expert
Bryan Passanisi
Founder, Brown Bear Digital
Bryan Passanisi is establishing himself as one of the sharpest emerging voices at the intersection of SEO and AI search. With 15 years of hands-on experience building and scaling search programs, he brings a depth of knowledge most agencies simply can't match — and a relentless focus on what's actually moving results right now.
As search evolves around AI Overviews, generative engines, and large language models, Bryan is at the front of it — testing, building, and translating what's changing into strategy that compounds. He understands the full search landscape, from technical SEO and entity optimization to GEO and LLM visibility, and he founded Brown Bear to give businesses direct access to that expertise without the agency overhead.
- 15 years across SEO, AI search, and paid strategy
- Deep expertise in GEO, entity SEO, and AI Overviews
- Direct access — no account managers, no hand-offs
Awards
- 2025Semrush AI/GEO Award Winner
- 2022Digiday Awards, Best Search Campaign Winner
Common Questions
Criminal Defense Lawyers, Answered
A criminal defense marketing agency gets a defense firm found and called by people facing charges and the family members searching for them. At Brown Bear that means charge and courthouse pages, Business Profile and bar listing work, paid search scheduled around your intake hours, AI search work and intake tracking that follows each call to a retained case.
Only if your state’s rules allow it. ABA Model Rule 7.2(c), formerly 7.4(d) and the model most states follow, permits a claim of certification as a specialist only when the certifying organization is approved by a state authority or accredited by the ABA, and the ad names it. Without that, describe the work instead: the courts, the number of DUI trials, the years in practice.
A pricing explanation usually helps. Contingency fees are not allowed in criminal defense, so clients expect to pay up front or in stages and want a sense of the number before calling. “How much does a dui lawyer cost” carries a keyword difficulty of 4, so a clear fee page is one of the easiest rankings available to a defense firm.
Slowly and carefully. We ask every client the same way, at the close of the matter, and make it easy to leave a review that says nothing about the charge. We also lean on the signals that do not depend on review volume: exact categories, accurate hours, proximity to the courthouse and complete attorney profiles.
For best lawyer searches, the Overview is mostly a readout of Business Profiles. In our September 2026 ledger, the one for best criminal defense lawyer in San Francisco cited nothing but profile cards. That makes profile work the AI search priority for defense firms, ahead of rewriting the website for AI.
Our lawyers page covers search for law firms in general. This page is only about criminal defense, where the decision happens within hours, the courthouse sets the geography, contingency fees are off the table and Google treats alleged crimes as sensitive data. The pages, campaigns and intake all change because of it.
Our client work to date has centered on medical practices, mostly plastic surgery, which deal with the same regulated advertising, local search and privacy questions. For legal search, we have published our own research on how AI Overviews cite law firms. We will walk you through that research applied to your courthouses before you commit to anything.
Further Reading
Legal Search Research
- Search Marketing for Law Firms→How Brown Bear approaches search for law firms across practice areas.
- Is SEO for Lawyers Different?→How criminal defense, injury and family law each invert the playbook, plus a Rule 7.1 copy checker.
- GEO for Law Firms: What AI Actually Cites→Eleven real client queries, including a criminal defense search, and every source the AI Overview cited.
See Who Gets the Call in Your Courthouse
Tell us the charges and counties you want to grow. We will show you who holds page one and the map pack for them and where after-hours calls are slipping away.