How Do Criminal Lawyers Get More Clients? (What Three Years of Ad Data Shows)

A Brisbane criminal firm switched its Google Ads back on and within weeks its intake team was taking three or four new enquiries a day, with more than half signing up and paying money into trust for a first conference. Four months later the principal said the leads weren't good. The volume was still there, but the big matters, the District Court trials worth tens of thousands in fees, had stopped coming.

Nothing about that is unusual in criminal law. Getting enquiries is the easy part. Getting enquiries from people who will pay privately for the kind of matter your firm wants is the hard part, and most criminal law marketing advice skips it entirely. The articles that rank for this topic are mostly written for American "DUI defense attorneys" and say the same five things: build a website, do SEO, run ads, get reviews, post on social media.

This article is built on three years of data from the Google Ads accounts we manage for criminal defence firms in Brisbane and Sydney, and on what criminal lawyers have told us on our calls. It covers where criminal clients come from, which offences can pay for which channel, what clicks really cost, how to keep Legal Aid and free-advice callers from eating your budget, and how to tell whether any of it is working.

Where do criminal law clients actually come from?

From four places, and their mix depends on how long your firm has been around and how much of its work is serious.

Two other sources are growing. AI assistants are one. A Melbourne criminal and family firm told us it found us by asking Gemini for a law firm marketer, and that one of its own recent clients had found the firm the same way. Our guide to ranking your law firm in AI search covers how to be the firm those tools recommend. The other is family members. Parents and partners often do the searching and make the first call, particularly for bail and serious charges, and they're also the people most willing to leave a review.

Why do so many criminal leads never become paying clients?

Because criminal law attracts a lot of people who can't or won't pay privately, and the ads that bring in paying clients bring them in too.

Criminal court volume is concentrated at the low-fee end. Traffic and vehicle offences made up 200,146 of the 521,632 defendants finalised in Australian criminal courts in 2024-25, about 38%, and assault another 75,576. The serious matters that carry large fees are a small fraction of the total. That volume end is also where Legal Aid, duty lawyers and people hoping for free advice are most common.

The Melbourne firm we mentioned ran Google Ads and SEO for crime alone for several months. Its leads went up, but it doesn't do Legal Aid work, and a large share of the criminal enquiries that came through were Legal Aid matters. With an average criminal matter of about $3,000, it didn't make enough money, and the firm moved its budget to family law. The Brisbane firm's intake team said its worst callers were people wanting free legal advice, or people with complaints that weren't criminal matters at all.

Here's what filters them out:

• Mention private fees early. On the landing page, in the ad if you can, and in the first minute of the call. Payment plans are fine to mention. "Free consultation" as a headline invites exactly the wrong people.
• Use negative keywords. "Free", "legal aid", "duty lawyer", "pro bono", "salary", "jobs" and "course" at a minimum.
• Qualify on the landing page. Ask which court the matter is listed at and when the next date is. A real defendant knows. A student writing an assignment doesn't.
• Give intake a script. If the person is clearly a Legal Aid matter, have a polite referral ready and move on quickly. Our article on whether law firms should qualify leads or take every call covers how to do this without losing good matters.

We actively work to keep Legal Aid enquiries out of our criminal campaigns, which means they often look more expensive per lead at first glance. A cheaper lead that never pays isn't cheaper.

Which offences can pay for Google Ads, and which can't?

This is the most important decision in criminal law marketing, and most firms never make it deliberately. Every offence group has a different volume, fee and buyer, and they need different channels.

The maths behind this is simple. If your average criminal matter is worth about $3,000, you can't afford to pay much more than $500 for a client once staff time is counted, and on Google in a capital city that's very hard to hit. If your matters average $10,000 to $15,000, or the campaign is built to catch the occasional $60,000 trial, the same cost per client is excellent. One serious matter can pay for a year of advertising.

The generic terms sit across all of this. "Criminal lawyers Brisbane" brings the widest mix of callers, from Legal Aid enquiries to the serious matters. People facing a serious sex offence charge are more likely to search "criminal lawyer" and the city than anything more specific, so a firm that wants those matters has to stay visible on the expensive generic terms, even though they produce plenty of poor leads. When the Brisbane firm's big matters dried up, that's where we moved its budget back to.

How much do criminal lawyer clicks cost in Australia?

More than most firms budget for, and more every year. Here's what one Brisbane criminal firm has paid per click on its generic "criminal lawyer" campaign over three years.

And here's what different terms and offence groups cost in the same account. Cost per lead is a lead, meaning a call, form or email, not a client.

Over the last 18 months, the generic criminal campaign averaged $40 a click and $324 a lead, and the offence category campaign (mostly domestic violence) $35 a click and $259 a lead. About 12 to 13% of clicks became enquiries.

Two lessons from the data. First, keyword tools understate the real cost badly. Ahrefs estimates "criminal lawyers Brisbane" at about US$11 a click, against the roughly $62 the firm actually paid. If you budget from a keyword tool you'll be out by a factor of three to five. Second, cheap clicks aren't a bargain. A Sydney criminal campaign run on a strategy that capped bids well below the market paid about $9 a click, but fewer than 2% of those clicks became enquiries and each lead cost $541. The cheap clicks were low on the page and loosely matched. Dynamic Search Ads produced $39 leads in the Brisbane account, and cheap leads rarely meant good matters.

Prices vary by city. A regional city is usually much cheaper than "criminal lawyer Sydney", which is one of the more expensive terms in Australian legal advertising, and basic traffic terms can be targeted for less than serious offences. Our guide to what a law firm lead should cost has figures for other practice areas, and are Google Ads worth it for law firms covers when the economics work.

Consistency matters too. Google now rewards steady spend. After three to four months at a stable budget, lead quality usually rises and cost per lead falls, while switching campaigns on and off resets the learning. An account with years of consistent history and a well-known name, like the Brisbane firm's, picks up much faster than a new one.

When do criminal clients look for a lawyer?

Urgently, on their phone, and often outside office hours. Here's when the Brisbane firm's enquiries arrived over 18 months.

About a third of enquiries came outside nine to five, and evening enquiries were the cheapest of any time block. Monday was the strongest day of the week, with the lowest cost per enquiry: people arrested over the weekend, Monday court lists, and families who waited out the weekend. Weekend clicks were cheaper but converted a little worse. Roughly 83% of enquiries came from a phone, so every page has to work on a small screen.

Calls made up about 44% of enquiries, forms about 41% and email clicks the rest. That means two things. Someone has to answer the phone at 7pm on a Sunday, whether that's a lawyer on roster, an after-hours answering service trained on your intake questions, or a virtual intake team. And forms need a call back within five minutes, because the person who filled in yours has probably filled in two others. Our article on why no one answers your calls anymore covers the other side of this.

Can criminal lawyers advertise on Facebook and Instagram?

Yes, with care, and for the right matters. Meta's advertising standards say ads "must not contain content that asserts or implies personal attributes", and that list expressly includes a criminal record. Meta also bans lead form questions asking whether a person has been charged with or convicted of a crime. So the classic ad hook, "Were you arrested last night?", gets rejected.

Meta works best in criminal law for matters where people go looking for information before they look for a lawyer: domestic violence and intervention order respondents, traffic matters, and professionals facing a regulator. The best ads describe the situation the right person is in, in the lawyer's own voice, and let them recognise themselves. A short questionnaire on the landing page then qualifies them and books a call. Google mostly reaches people who already know they need a lawyer. Meta reaches a bigger pool with a mix of people who know they need help and people who are only starting to work out what's happening.

Meta is weaker for serious indictable matters and appeals. One firm we reviewed had run Facebook ads for criminal appeals that produced poor leads, and appeals belong on Google, where people are actively looking. Our guides to Facebook ads for law firms and Meta vs Google ads for law firms go further, and our video marketing guide covers how to film the lawyer-to-camera ads that work best.

What can a criminal lawyer say in an ad?

Criminal lawyers don't face the state-based restrictions that personal injury lawyers do in Queensland, WA and the NT. You're bound by rule 36 of the Solicitors' Conduct Rules and the Australian Consumer Law, and the agency that writes your ads doesn't take that responsibility off you.

The Queensland Law Society's guidance is that "specialist" on its own is likely to be treated as a claim to accredited specialist status. If one of your lawyers is an accredited specialist in criminal law, name them and say it. Our article on lawyer advertising rules in Australia covers rule 36 and the platform policies in detail.

How do you get Google reviews when clients don't want to be named?

This is the hardest part of reviews for any criminal firm. Nobody wants a public review under their own name saying they needed a criminal lawyer, and plenty of good results still end with the client relieved rather than grateful. The map results for "criminal lawyer" searches in a city are valuable, and review count is one of the biggest factors in who shows up there.

What works:

• Ask automatically at file closure. The Brisbane firm closed about 20 files a month and relied on each lawyer ticking a box to send a review request, which meant most never went out. A request triggered from the practice management system when the file closes, by SMS rather than email, with one or two follow-ups at most, fixes that.
• Ask family members. The parent or partner who called you, sat in court and saw the result is often happy to review, and they're reviewing their own experience of your firm.
• Never ask the client to describe the charge. "How was our communication and support?" gets a review. "Tell people how we helped with your matter" gets silence.
• Make it easy to review under initials. Google shows the name on the reviewer's account, and plenty of people use initials or a first name.
• Never confirm a reviewer was a client when you reply. Thank them for the feedback, don't mention the matter.

Our guide to getting Google reviews for a law firm covers Google's rules, drip campaigns and reply templates, and our article on Google Business Profile for lawyers covers the rest of the map listing.

What should a criminal lawyer's website include?

Pages that match how people search: one page per offence type and one per court you appear at. A regional NSW criminal lawyer who appears at courts in two towns is a good example. We built a location page for each court town and kept the homepage focused on the main one, because people search the town where their court date is.

Content answering the questions people search in the middle of a crisis helps too. "What is an AVO" gets about 1,300 searches a month in Australia, "what is bail" 700 and "how to get an AVO dismissed" 350. A plain, accurate answer from a lawyer is useful to the reader and shows Google and AI tools that you know the area. One Sydney criminal firm found short question-and-answer articles of 500 to 600 words worked better for it than long guides. Our guides to law firm landing pages and SEO for law firms cover the structure in more depth.

What about Local Services Ads?

US guides to criminal defence marketing often lead with Google Local Services Ads, the pay-per-lead listings with a verified badge that sit above the normal ads. They aren't available in Australia, so any guide that builds a plan around them doesn't apply here. Google Search ads, your Business Profile and reviews do that job instead.

How do you know if your marketing is actually working?

By tracking every enquiry to the matter it became and the fee it produced, by offence type. Cost per lead is a sign of life. Cost per paying client is the number to manage.

Here's the example Byron gave the Brisbane firm. Four leads cost $2,000. One of them becomes a $60,000 matter. The cost per lead was $500, which looks expensive. The cost per client was $2,000 against a $60,000 fee. A dashboard that only shows cost per lead will tell you to cut the campaign that produced your best matter of the year.

To get there:

• Track calls properly. With call tracking on your website, phone enquiries can be traced to the ad or search that produced them. Without it, calls are the grey area in every report.
• Record the outcome and fee for every enquiry. Signed or not, what kind of matter, and the estimated fee.
• Send the value back to Google Ads. When Google learns which enquiries became paying clients, it bids for more people like them and fewer like the free-advice callers.
• Report by offence group. A blended cost per client hides the fact that traffic matters and trials have completely different economics.
• Hold budgets steady long enough to judge. Three to four months on a stable budget before deciding.

Our guide to law firm marketing ROI covers the tracking setup and the reports in detail, and our CRM guide covers where the data should live.

What should a criminal law firm do first?

Work out which matters you want and what you can afford to pay for each one, then build campaigns around those matters rather than around "criminal lawyer". For most firms that means a campaign for the generic terms that catch serious matters, a separate one for the volume work you want, a phone that's answered in the evening, and tracking good enough to tell the difference between a busy month and a profitable one.

If you'd like help building that, our criminal law marketing work runs on Google Ads and Meta with every enquiry tracked to the matter it produced, for firms in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and around Australia. Book a call and we'll show you what your clicks are really costing and where your best matters come from.