Get More Criminal Defense Clients
If you are a criminal defense lawyer, you have chosen that specialty because you love the work. You love being in court, fighting the system, and helping people who need it. Criminal defense is not the most lucrative legal specialty, but it is satisfying and important work.
But running a law firm is still a business. You need clients, and you need to acquire them in a cost effective manner. But that can be difficult to do.
As an attorney running your own firm, or as a solo practitioner, I know you are pitched constantly with schemes and scams for generating business: yellow pages, online advertising, internet directory listings, web site optimization, and more. It is very hard to know who can deliver valuable legal advertising that will actually get your phone to ring with potential clients.
The legal marketing landscape is a minefield, and the reasons for this are simple – there are a lot of attorneys competing for leads, and those leads are perceived as valuable. And for people who are accused of a crime need and legal assistance in a criminal case, client fees are at least several hundred dollars even for a very simple minor misdemeanor, and often several thousand dollars or more for DUIs and felony offenses.
Get Just The Leads You Need
Often for an investment of just a few hundred dollars, you can find out within weeks whether our system will work for you or not. Our business is based on:
- Up front results. You’ll either get leads or you won’t. There’s no hand waving about future promises if you just keep sending us money.
- Measurable success. You will know fairly quickly how many clients you have gained from these leads.
- No Commitment. If it doesn’t work out for you, for whatever reason, you’re done. You’re not locked in to a contract for a year or more.
What we offer is a bottom line, direct, economical, and low risk solution to this problem. We have web sites that are generating leads and inquiries from people facing criminal charges. We resell you the leads, generally on a month to month basis, based on historical numbers of leads generated in a particular market.
The beauty of buying leads directly is that is a simple, measurable business transaction. It can easily be an add-on to your other marketing efforts. If you have the capacity to take on more clients and more business, and can make a profit by turning leads into clients, then it is practically a no-brainer.
Keeping track of expensive marketing efforts can be hard work. You need to track develop advertising campaigns, improve your website, and figure out what efforts are successful in bringing in clients. And if you aren’t doing the marketing and developing content yourself, then you are paying someone to do it. That can be even tougher to narrow down exactly what is working.
Buying criminal defense leads simply gets to the end result of the marketing process – inquiries from potential clients.
And there is no commitment. If you agree to buy a month’s worth of leads, and it doesn’t work out for you (either you don’t get enough leads to justify the cost, the leads aren’t of the right quality, or for whatever reason you aren’t getting enough business) then you simply don’t renew for the next month.
Alternatives To Buying Leads Directly
Here is a summary of your options for generating leads for a criminal defense lawyer practice.
Traditional Yellow Pages
Pros – Simple, can be effective.
Cons – Very Expensive. Requires a long term commitment of a year or more. No Guaranteed Results.
Bottom Line: Can be a good option if you have a big, mass market practice, but difficult to make the numbers work for many solo lawyers or small firms.
Your Own Web Site / Blog
Pros – Fully customizable, able to target your message exactly as you would like. You can blog and build your reputation and credibility online. A good site that generates business is generally very economical.
Cons – Are you actually getting traffic, other than searches on your name? It can be a lot of work to build a quality site, or if you don’t oversee the work yourself, or have a trusted marketing company, you risk outsourcing to someone who can’t build a site that delivers leads.
Bottom Line: Virtually every law practice needs some kind of a web presence to be credible. Regardless of what else you do, it makes sense to develop your own web strategy in addition to buying direct leads and other advertising.
Findlaw or Third Party Run Websites
Pros – Relatively simple.
Cons – Expensive. Usually requires a long term commitment of 6 months or more, with no guaranteed results. Customization, or ownership of your own site can be even more expensive.
Bottom Line: It can make sense to outsource your site development to these companies. Just make sure you own your domain name, and the content, so if you decide you don’t want to pay them anymore, you are left with an asset you can continue with.
Internet Marketing Consultants / SEO / SEM
Pros: You can get very good results if you have a knowledgeable internet marketing consultant helping you with your site.
Cons: Can be expensive. It is very hard to tell upfront who really knows what they are doing and can deliver value. No guarantees.
Bottom Line: If you have found someone you have reason to trust (a personal referral from another attorney) then it can absolutely make sense. Especially if you’ve had your own web site for years that may be under performing. A good SEO consultant can sometimes fix problems that have been holding your site back. The best SEO/SEM consultants are often the most cautious about over promising rankings.
Caution: Do not hire anyone who spams you, who guarantees top rankings in 3 weeks, who uses the phrase “we do advanced search engine placement” or “we submit your site to 1000s of search engines”. These are clear signals of scam artists.
Directory & Website Listings / Internet Yellow Pages
These range from Verizon Superpages ads and listings to the many lawyer directories on the Internet.
Pros – Simple.
Cons – Costs range from a few hundred dollars a month to a few hundred dollars a year. No results guaranteed, and many listings are basically worthless. It is difficult to tell the few worthwhile listings from the many that are not.
Bottom Line: Caveat Emptor. Try to measure any results you get, and not get locked into expensive, long term commitments. If you are paying to drive traffic to your existing website, then it is important that your website is well designed for converting this traffic into leads. Lastly, most paid lawyer directories are crap.
What Does it Cost to Buy Criminal Defense Leads in My State or Region?
We work on either a pay per lead, or for a flat fee a month to month/quarter to quarter. We will quote you a fee to buy a month or three of leads, based on conservative estimates of how many email or phone leads we think you will get.
In some markets, our cost per lead averages $20 or less, in more competitive markets, it can be considerably more. See our criminal defense lead cost page.
For pre-qualified criminal law firms, we can offer you a free sample period for some markets. We will give you the opportunity to “test drive” our leads for a week or two so you can see for yourself whether you are satisfied with the quality of the inquiries and contacts we are forwarding you.
Do you Cover Every Region and State?
We cover most areas, but not all. And since we sell leads to each form and region exclusively, many areas are not available.
So while we have very successful sites in Massachusetts, Michigan, Virginia, and other states, we already have happy clients there, and we don’t compete against ourselves.
Get Lawyer Leads does not do business in Connecticut.
We know we aren’t the solution for everyone. But if you are a good criminal defense lawyer, who is able to sign up clients, and just needs more leads to work with, then we may be a excellent fit for your needs.
More Questions?
See our FAQ page.
What’s next?
Please contact us for further information about how you can get more criminal defense clients at an extremely economical rate, with no long term commitment.