Case study · 90-day engagement
A solo DUI defense attorney in Phoenix had been spending $11,200/mo on Google Ads bidding against three big firms with full-time SEM teams. He was getting calls — most of them from people shopping price who did not understand how DUI defense pricing works. The cost per signed case was unsustainable. He was a quarter away from cutting all paid advertising.
The challenge
The attorney came in through our free audit. The bot scored the website at 49 and flagged a fundamental positioning problem: a solo lawyer running the same Google Ads strategy as a 22-attorney firm.
We pulled the data. The damage:
He was an excellent DUI defense lawyer with a 91% case dismissal rate. None of his marketing reflected that. He looked, on paper, like the cheapest of three competitors.
The plan
DUI defense LSA approval is the slowest in legal — extra ID verification, bar association cross-check, malpractice insurance review. Started the application week 1. Bar verification cleared week 3. Background check completed week 5. LSA badge live week 6. From week 6 onward, "Google Screened" appeared next to his name on every relevant search. Game changed.
Built /dui-arrested at the URL level. The page assumes the visitor was arrested in the last 24-48 hours. Hero is a phone number with the line "I will personally answer this number, 24/7, free first call." Below: 5 things to do in the next 24 hours, 5 things never to do, and the 91% dismissal rate as social proof. Form for people who want a callback instead of a phone call. Conversion rate jumped from 0.9% to 4.1% in 6 weeks.
Every paid call hit a CallRail menu: "Were you arrested in the last 72 hours? Press 1." Every "1" rang the attorney directly on his cell phone with a pre-record briefing him on which keyword the call came from. Anyone pressing 2 (general inquiry) hit a paralegal during business hours. The attorney was no longer answering tire-kicker calls — only emergencies.
Killed broad-match on terms like "DUI lawyer." Restructured around long-tail intent: "DUI arrested last night Phoenix," "first DUI Arizona lawyer," "DUI bond hearing tomorrow." CPC on the long-tail averaged $14, a third of the head-term CPC. Quality Score lifted from 4 to 9 because the landing page was finally relevant.
AI tools we used
We do not pretend the work happens by hand. Three of our internal tools are the reason this engagement moved as fast as it did. Each of them replaces what used to be days of human time.
Custom AI we built that grades every search term on commercial intent, urgency, and local match in under a second. Replaces a half-day human audit.
Takes one bad search term and proposes the related variants we should also negate before they show up. Found 87 negatives nobody had thought of.
Crawls the site and fires every conversion event in a sandbox so you can see what is actually being recorded vs what should be. Caught the duplicate form fire in 4 minutes.
The execution
| Week | What we shipped | What moved |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | LSA application started, all docs gathered | Application accepted, bar verification kicked off |
| Week 2 | /dui-arrested landing page live, urgency-focused copy | Conversion rate jumps from 0.9% to 2.4% same week |
| Week 3 | CallRail phone-first qualifier menu in place | Attorney stops answering tire-kicker calls; signs 4 cases week 4 |
| Week 4 | Long-tail keyword restructure, broad-match killed | CPC drops from $48 avg to $19 avg |
| Week 6 | LSA badge live, "Google Screened" appears on results | First LSA call in 4 hours, signed within 48 |
| Week 9 | Conversion rate stable at 4.1%, signed cases trending up | Signed 17 cases in week 9 |
| Week 12 | Quarterly review | Run rate stable at 21 signed cases/mo |
The numbers
The mix that produced the new run rate:
Average DUI defense fee in Phoenix is $4,200. The +15 monthly signed cases at the new run rate represent roughly $63,000/mo in additional gross revenue. The retainer cost less than one DUI case.
My competitors had 22 attorneys and a marketing director. I had me, a paralegal, and an iPad. Mark made the math work for a solo firm without me hiring anyone. The day the LSA badge went live, my entire pipeline shifted.
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