Three options. Only one actually works for your business.
The client searches once on a Saturday morning, hungover, with a court date in a fortnight
Criminal defence searches happen at 7am on a Saturday, on a phone, by someone who was charged six hours earlier and is now sitting on a couch staring at a CAN with a date on it. They are not comparison-shopping. They type 'criminal lawyer [city]' or 'DUI lawyer [suburb]' or 'AVO lawyer NSW' and ring the first calm-looking number that picks up the phone. The first page is dominated by the brand-name firms (Doogue + George, Galbally & Rolfe, Slater + Gordon, Stary Norton Halphen) who all run multi-state paid budgets, plus the Legal Aid eligibility checker that funnels half the traffic to the duty list before a private firm gets a look. The local specialist with twelve years on the Local Court list, an Accredited Specialist in Criminal Law, and a fixed-fee scope for a guilty-plea sentencing, sits on page two. And because every promise in criminal defence advertising is constrained by the Legal Services Commissioner rules ('best outcome', 'avoid a conviction', 'won't lose your licence' are all flagged), most firms publish nothing rather than risk a complaint, which leaves the SERP to whoever has the biggest marketing team to thread the compliance needle every week.
Good criminal defence marketing is three things, in this order: an offence-type service-page library that splits traffic offences (DUI, mid-range PCA, high-range PCA, drug driving, driving while disqualified), assault and DV with AVO/ADVO/IVO/FVRO, drug offences (possession, supply, trafficking), sexual offences (where you hold the relevant specialist accreditation), and white-collar (corporate, tax, fraud) into their own pages, each ranking for the queries that bring the right matter to the right specialist; a court-pathway content layer that explains Local Court, District Court and Supreme Court appearance pathways for each offence type in plain English, with sentencing-submission and character-reference templates downloadable from the page (these are the single biggest lead magnets in criminal defence search); and a Google Business profile that calls out Specialist Criminal Law accreditation (where held), the courts you appear in regularly, and the 30-minute free initial consultation as a low-risk first step that doesn't lock the client in.
Six agents, working in your accounts.
Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.
Builds your annual plan around the offence types you actually want more of (indictable traffic with licence consequences, contested AVOs, drug supply, white-collar with long briefs) rather than chasing every duty-list matter. Briefs the other agents so the service pages, the LSC-compliant ads, the social explainers and the Google Business profile all reinforce the 'Accredited Specialist with Local Court presence' positioning instead of competing with the brand-name firms on national authority alone.
Imports your existing site so you stop paying for hosting plus a CMS subscription, and makes spinning up a new offence-type page a fast job. Ships a clean service page for traffic offences, assault and DV with AVO/ADVO/IVO/FVRO, drug offences, sexual offences (where you hold the relevant accreditation), and white-collar, each with the Specialist Criminal Law badge above the fold, court-pathway explainers, sentencing-submission and character-reference templates, a free 30-minute scoping consultation CTA, and an honest Legal Aid eligibility line. Two taps to ship.
Goes through your live site for the things that actually move criminal-defence rankings: offence-specific H1s on every page, legal-services schema with Specialist Criminal Law accreditation status, court-pathway markup for Local Court, District Court and Supreme Court appearances, and a Google Business Profile that beats the brand-name firms on completeness for your courts and suburbs. Auto-applies the low-risk fixes, flags anything implying an outcome.
Launches Google Ads on the queries that actually convert ('DUI lawyer [suburb]', 'AVO lawyer [city]', 'drug supply lawyer [city]', 'high-range PCA [suburb]', 'white-collar defence [city]') with a built-in Legal Services Commissioner advertising-rules check against your state on every ad copy variant. Lifts bids on Saturday morning when the just-charged search spike happens. Keeps Meta off for assault and drug matters where emotional targeting risks an LSC complaint.
Turns the court-pathway and process questions you'd answer in a first appointment into compliant posts on your real accounts: 'what happens at Local Court on a first appearance', 'mid-range PCA mandatory disqualification explained', 'AVO breach vs AVO contested, the difference', 'character references for a sentencing submission'. Every post pre-checked against the LSC rules. Builds the calm-expert trust signal that wins the Saturday-morning prospect comparing your firm against Stary Norton Halphen on a second read. You suggest topics, the agent drafts, you approve.
Drafts the long-form pieces that rank for the queries clients Google before the matter goes to court: 'will I lose my licence for mid-range PCA NSW', 'AVO contested hearing what happens', 'first-time drug possession likely sentence', 'when does a fraud charge go to District Court', 'character reference template for sentencing'. Two drafts a month, in your voice, LSC-compliant, that bring the better-prepared client to your site weeks before the first appearance.
Your first 30 days.
- Five offence-type pages (traffic, assault and DV, drug, sexual, white-collar) indexed and starting to rank on long-tail offence queries
- Annual plan weighted to the matters that actually justify a private fee, delivered by Sam
- Google Business Profile rebuilt as 'Criminal Justice Attorney' with Specialist Criminal Law accreditation and courts attended in the description
- Compliance-checked Google Ads live with Saturday-morning bid lift on charge-type queries
- Plain-English Local Court, District Court and Supreme Court pathway explainers published for each offence type
- Sentencing-submission and character-reference downloadable templates wired into every offence-type page
- Legal-services schema with Specialist Criminal Law accreditation deployed sitewide where held
- Honest Legal Aid eligibility line added to every offence page with a state-specific link out to the eligibility checker
Criminal defence clients do not shop firms. They Google once, on a Saturday morning, on a phone, hungover, with a CAN in their other hand, and ring whoever has the calmest result for the exact offence they were charged with. The work is making sure that result is your firm, with your Specialist Criminal Law accreditation visible, the court pathway already explained, and the free 30-minute scoping call as a low-risk first step that the brand-name firms don't offer because their intake teams can't afford to.
Agencies are too dear to actually run the offence-type service-page library and the LSC-compliant ads for $4k a month. Tools are cheap but the Legal Services Commissioner outcome rules sit in the back of your head every time you draft a headline, so you publish nothing. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the offence-type pages, launch the LSC-compliant ads with a Saturday-morning bid lift, post the court-pathway explainers, and keep your Google Business profile beating the brand-name firms in your courts. You stay in the driver's seat, two taps to approve from chambers.