Criminal law firm marketing across the charge mix

Most criminal firms run two businesses on one website: a large number of small matters and a small number of serious ones. In Indianapolis, criminal defense runs at 2,400 searches a month at $52.80 a click, measured 3 August 2026. The two do not market the same way.

Last updated: 5 August 2026

Why does the charge mix decide how the site reads?

Because the two ends of the caseload are bought by different people on different timescales for different amounts of money.

A first offense at the low end is a transaction. The person searching wants to know what it costs, whether they will lose their license, and whether anybody will pick up. They compare three firms in an evening and choose largely on price and availability. A serious felony is nothing like that. The family is choosing on demonstrated command of one narrow thing, they will meet more than one attorney, and money is close to the last consideration.

A single site is asked to be persuasive to both. Most sites resolve that tension by writing for the middle, which is a place neither reader lives.

The admission first: our dataset cannot help with this at all. It prices criminal defense as one category, across 17 US cities, with no separate row for a misdemeanor, a felony or any individual offense. It will tell a firm what the attention costs in its city and nothing whatever about which half of the practice that attention belongs to. Anybody presenting a criminal defense figure as a felony forecast is overreading it.

What happens when the misdemeanor page outranks the felony page?

The firm becomes visible for its cheapest work and invisible for the work it wants.

This is the predictable outcome rather than bad luck. Common offenses generate more searches than rare ones — a proposition we have not measured and do not need to, because the second half is enough on its own: the questions around a common charge are simpler, and a short clear page about one is easier to write and easier to rank than a page about a charge the county sees a few dozen times a year. Left alone, the site drifts toward what is easy to publish.

Three costs follow, and only the first is obvious.

• The intake fills with matters the firm did not want, each consuming the same first conversation as a matter worth many times more.
• The site's own vocabulary shifts. Pages written to reassure somebody facing a first offense read, to a family facing something serious, as a firm that handles small things.
• The referral reader forms the wrong impression. Another attorney checking whether to send a serious matter here reads the same site everybody else does.

None of that is an argument for refusing volume work. It is an argument for deciding, before anything is written, which end of the practice the site is built to win and what the other end is allowed to look like.

How does a firm present both without one devaluing the other?

By separating them structurally rather than by tone, and by letting the volume work be plainly transactional.

Two rules do most of the work. Do not run the two through the same page, because a page trying to be both is a page that reassures nobody. And do not hide the volume work: a firm that quietly removes its misdemeanor pages loses the searches that pay the overhead and gains nothing, because the family reading about a serious charge is not counting how many other pages exist.

The part that is genuinely difficult is the fee. Publishing a figure for the routine work, which is the work that can carry a figure, tells every reader what this firm's floor is. Publishing nothing leaves 15 of the 62 buyer questions we counted on these searches unanswered, because that is how many of them are price questions. The workable answer is to publish the fee where it is knowable, on its own page, and to say plainly on the serious pages that a fee is set after the matter is understood — which is a real answer rather than silence.

What does the traffic cost across the charge range?

It does not vary by charge in our data. It varies enormously by city.

Measured 3 August 2026 across 17 US cities. Indianapolis and Chicago carry identical volume at prices that differ by more than twice: a hundred Indianapolis clicks is $5,280 and a hundred Chicago clicks is $2,372, which is multiplication on the two measured figures rather than a forecast of what either produces.

Criminal defense is also one of the two US practice areas in this dataset that does not cover all 20 cities — Austin, Dallas and Columbus produced no criminal defense row at all, so a firm in one of those three is working without a figure from us and should say so to anybody quoting one.

Which of these four suppliers published a price?

One of the four had a figure on the page the day we read it.

This is a presence check and nothing more. Our tooling pulled case values and half-sentences off these pages alongside genuine fees, so no amount is attached to any named business anywhere on this site. Across the whole 40 read that day: twelve carried a price, five carried a range instead, eight carried a guarantee of some kind, and one offered work with no minimum term.

Where is another supplier the better choice?

Three cases, and in each of them the honest answer points away from us.

• If the firm wants a distinct visual identity for a serious-crimes practice, a design-led studio does that better than we do. deckerdesign.com is one of them and did not publish a price, so expect that conversation to begin without a number.
• If the aim is a directory listing and peer recognition rather than search, that is a different product. bestlawyers.com operates in that space and did not publish a price either.
• If the firm needs matters this quarter, that is paid campaigns, and we do not manage ad spend or bid on anybody's behalf. magnifylab.com had a price on the page, which at least means that conversation starts with one.

What do you charge, and why never per case?

$1,450 for the Practice Sprint, $2,900 for the build. Fixed, published, no minimum term.

Nothing here is priced by the inquiry, the case or the matter, in any market. Referral fees are restricted in prescribed legal business and the restriction binds the firm making the payment as well as the party receiving it. Lawyer advertising in the United States runs through ABA Model Rule 7.2(b), adopted in a different form by each state, and which form binds a particular firm is a question for that firm and its own advisers rather than for a marketing supplier.

Three to four months for movement, six to nine before the work can be judged fairly.

Before you shortlist anyone

We read 40 legal-marketing suppliers in full in August 2026, including several named on this page. Twelve published a price. One offered work with no minimum term.

The free report gives you the full count, named, so you can repeat it rather than take ours. It also shows how many people search for your practice areas in your town, and what those clicks cost to buy at Google's own prices.

Get the report — five questions, about two minutes →

No call required. Our own prices are on that page.

Where should I read next?

For a city-level view of the same problem: chicago law firm marketing and law firm seo company nyc.

If the mix decision needs writing down before anything is built: sample law firm marketing plan and law firm marketing plan example.

A practice area with the opposite spread of matter values: family law firm marketing.

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