Content for criminal defense law firms

Criminal defense searches are urgent. Someone has been arrested, received a summons, or learned they are under investigation, and they or a family member are looking for a lawyer that day. Often the person reading is a parent or spouse trying to understand what happens next on someone else's behalf.

That urgency changes what a criminal defense site has to do well. This page covers the questions people ask a defense firm before they call, the fee, publicity, and confidentiality rules that apply to defense content, and the gaps that show up most on defense sites. It belongs with our overview for law firms.

What people facing a charge ask

The questions come in a rush. What happens at the first court date? Will I have to stay in jail until then? Could this cost me my license or my job? Should I talk to the detective who called? Can the charge be reduced or dismissed? How much will a lawyer cost, and is it one fee or several? Family members add their own: how do we find out where he is, and can we hire a lawyer for her?

A firm cannot answer any individual case on a web page, but it can explain its process, the stages of a typical case in its courts, and how it charges. It helps to put a plain question to the attorneys who take the late-night calls: "What do families ask us that the defendant never thinks to?" Those answers deserve their own page, because the person searching is often not the client.

Fee, publicity, and confidentiality rules for defense content

ABA Model Rule 1.5(d)(2) prohibits "a contingent fee for representing a defendant in a criminal case," so defense fee pages describe other arrangements, such as flat fees, staged fees, or hourly billing. Explaining what each stage covers (arraignment, motions, trial) and what changes the price helps a reader compare firms honestly.

Blog posts about pending matters raise a different issue. Model Rule 3.6(a) bars a lawyer "who is participating or has participated in the investigation or litigation of a matter" from making an extrajudicial statement the lawyer knows or reasonably should know will be publicly disseminated and "will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter." Paragraph (b) permits some statements, including "information contained in a public record." Confidentiality is a separate rule: Model Rule 1.6(a) bars revealing information relating to a representation without the client's informed consent, subject to exceptions. Publicity limits and confidentiality limits are two different questions. A case result can pass one test and fail the other, so each one should go to the firm's ethics counsel under its own state's rules before it appears anywhere.

Common gaps on criminal defense sites

Charge pages often read like statute summaries: the offense, the penalty range, and a phone number. They rarely say what this firm does in the first week of a case, what the client should bring to the first meeting, or how the firm communicates while a case is open. Results pages may list dismissals and acquittals with no facts, which tells a reader little about their own situation.

Consider a fictional defense firm in Texas that handles DWI and drug cases in two counties and refers out federal matters. Those boundaries, and the reasons behind them, are facts the firm already holds. A writer has no business inventing them, and we do not ask anyone to. We gather them from the attorneys, confirm them in writing, and build the charge and process pages on that record.