Audit every channel and conversion path
The team reviewed campaigns, landing pages and tracking together, then set the order of work: establish attribution, separate demand and only then scale.
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Criminal Defense Marketing Case Study
How a Chicago defense firm generated 1,235 tracked case leads
DRD Law combined tightly structured paid search with a local legal-content programme, producing $59 Google Ads leads and 598% organic traffic growth across 12 months.
1,235
Tracked case leads
$59
Google Ads cost per lead
598%
Organic traffic growth
$197
Acquisition cost per case
The client and the commercial context
DRD Law LLC
DRD Law is a Chicago criminal defense firm founded by David Drwencke. The practice handles urgent, high-stakes matters including felonies, gun charges, domestic violence and drug offences.
The firm's courtroom reputation was stronger than its online visibility. Previous marketing relationships had produced reports and management overhead without giving David a dependable view of where new cases were coming from.
The search programme therefore had two jobs: create immediate, phone-led demand through Google Ads and build durable organic visibility around the criminal-law questions Chicago residents were already asking.
Problem and diagnosis
The challenge
Previous agencies had created another task for the managing attorney to supervise. The account lacked trustworthy attribution, practice-area focus and a reliable answer to the question: which searches are actually producing cases?
The starting position
Generic legal campaigns spread budget across very different types of criminal-defense demand. Without reliable conversion tracking, it was difficult to distinguish useful calls from activity that looked good in a dashboard.
That uncertainty carried an operational cost. Every hour spent chasing an agency or interrogating a report was an hour taken away from active cases.
The rebuild began with attribution and then separated paid search by practice area. Organic content was planned around real local questions, while channel reporting was consolidated so calls, forms and retained cases could be reviewed together.
What the audit found
- Generic legal campaigns rather than criminal-defense intent groups
- Incomplete conversion tracking and uncertain channel contribution
- Too much attorney time spent supervising marketing
- Limited organic visibility despite a strong local reputation
- No dependable view of which channels generated retained cases
- Budget spread across unfocused keyword themes
Before and after
What changed in the operating picture
The firm moved from opaque agency reporting to a search programme that could be reviewed by channel, call and retained case.
Before
Low
Agency confidence
Previous partners had overpromised
Limited
Transparency
Spend and outcomes were difficult to reconcile
Hours
Management time
Marketing required too much supervision
Unknown
Case attribution
No consistent channel-to-case view
After 12 months
1,235
Tracked case leads
A consistent mix of calls and forms
$59
Ads cost per lead
Google Ads in the source period
598%
Organic growth
Search Console click increase
$197
Acquisition cost
Tracked cost per retained case
The sequence
From unfocused spend to $59 Google Ads leads
A 12-month programme balancing immediate criminal-defense demand with compounding organic visibility.
Separate paid search by practice area
Dedicated structures were created for general criminal defense, misdemeanours, gun crimes and felonies. Local Services Ads were added for urgent callers.
Publish content around local legal questions
The organic programme focused on questions and case types relevant to Chicago residents, giving the firm useful search visibility beyond paid clicks.
Optimise against enquiries and retained cases
Search terms and bids were reviewed continuously. Budget followed the themes producing useful calls while organic traffic continued to compound.
Documented outcomes
A pipeline led by calls and supported by SEO
Data note: WhatConverts lead outcomes were not maintained completely by the client during the source period. The figures shown use the recorded data and may understate total retained-case performance.
1,235
Tracked case leads
$59
Google Ads cost per lead
598%
Organic traffic growth
$197
Tracked acquisition cost
The source period recorded 1,235 leads. Phone calls accounted for 988 of them, which fits the urgency and privacy of criminal-defense enquiries.
Google Ads produced 618 conversions at $59 per lead, a 29% reduction from the preceding period. Separating campaigns by case type meant budget could be evaluated against the work the firm actually wanted.
Organic search provided the strongest growth curve. Search Console clicks increased from 873 to 6,097 over the 12-month comparison, equivalent to 598% growth.
The tracked acquisition cost was $197 per retained case. More importantly, the firm could finally see paid search, organic search and Google Business Profile demand in one reporting view.
These are client-specific historical results from the stated source periods. They do not guarantee the same outcome for another firm.
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