This playbook is for trial users at criminal defense firms configuring GavelGrow for the first time. By the end of the 90-day cycle below you'll have automatic replies going out on every form lead at any hour (texts once US carriers approve your number), after-hours call forwarding to the on-call attorney, retainer-ready lead records (jurisdiction, charge, bond, court date), and signed clients' court dates on your calendar with automatic reminders to your team. The goal is to turn 2am leads into morning retainers without anyone losing sleep. Track your own after-hours retention before and after to measure the impact for your firm.
Marketing context: /solutions/criminal-defenseA DUI arrest happens at 1am. The lead calls 5 firms. Whichever firm answers first gets the retainer; everyone else loses. Your setup priority is 24/7 automatic replies (email at once, texts once US carriers approve your number) and forwarding your tracking numbers to the on-call attorney’s mobile.
A lead that comes in at 3am, gets assigned to intake the next morning, and gets a callback at 2pm has already hired someone else. Setup must collapse the handoff window: after-hours calls forward straight to an attorney’s mobile, and the case context (jurisdiction, charge, bond, court date) is on the lead record before the callback.
Criminal defense is unique in that every signed client has a calendar of court dates from day one. Court-date reminders are both a client-service expectation and a chance to demonstrate value. Capture the next court date on intake, then add each court date to the GavelGrow calendar: the team members on it get reminders 7 days, 1 day and 1 hour before, so your staff can make sure the client shows up.
Stand up 24/7 intake, after-hours call forwarding, and retainer-ready lead records.
Review organic results, segment by charge type, and put signed clients' court dates on the calendar so reminders go out.
Use modelled practice-area benchmarks, expand to underweight charge types, and lock in repeatable reporting.
Bracketed tokens like [city] are placeholders — replace with your firm’s service area before launching campaigns.
40-50% of paid budget for most firms — DUI is the highest-volume sub-category in criminal defense
20-30% — segment each charge type as its own campaign so you can read CPL by charge
15-20% — broader intent, useful for top-of-funnel; expect lower conversion rate than charge-specific
5-10% — cheap clicks, defends your name from competitor bids
10-15% — high-intent crisis searches; send them straight to the 24/7 auto-reply and the on-call attorney’s line
Criminal defense is venue-locked. Captures whether the matter is in a court your firm covers; mark out-of-area leads 'Not a fit' with the reason 'Outside our service area' instead of booking a consult.
DUI, drug possession, assault, domestic, weapons, federal. The answer goes on the lead record, so the attorney who calls back knows the charge and which follow-up questions to ask.
Drives urgency. An arrest in the last 24 hours needs the on-call attorney now; a 90-day-old matter can go to the standard consult queue.
Critical for retainer quoting — clients in custody need different urgency and different conversation than out-on-bond clients. Lets the attorney quote on first call.
Tells intake how urgent the matter is: a court date within 7 days gets a same-day callback. After signing, add it to the GavelGrow calendar as a court date so your team gets reminders.
First-offense vs prior convictions changes retainer significantly. Y/N + brief description lets the attorney assess case complexity before the call.
DUI-only question: set it to show when a visitor picks DUI/DWI as the practice area. The answer tells your team to put the DMV hearing deadline (typically 10 days from arrest in most states) on the calendar.
Y/N + names if known. Gives the attorney the names to run through your conflict check before the firm signs, which matters because conflicts in criminal defense are absolute.
Many criminal defense leads cannot speak freely from home, work, or shared device. Captures preferred channel and time window.
All sequences are consent-first by default — STOP / HELP keywords honored automatically, consent events captured to an append-only audit log.
Auto-response: ‘Got your message — an attorney will reach you within 5 minutes.’ This is the single most important configuration in the playbook. The 2am DUI lead lives or dies on this.
Reinforcement: 'Our on-call attorney has your message, and you'll hear from them shortly.' Sequence steps send whether or not the attorney has called yet, so keep the wording true either way. Prevents the lead from continuing to dial competitors while the callback is on its way.
A short text with the firm's direct line, worded so it makes sense whether or not they have already spoken to an attorney. Intake follows up by phone on any lead still waiting for a callback.
Short follow-up offering a free consultation and answering the most common arrest-moment FAQs, worded so a client who already hired you would not mind getting it. Recovers leads who hired no one in the panic.
Sent automatically for every court date on your GavelGrow calendar, by email (and by text once US carriers approve your number) to the team members on the event, not to the client. Your staff can then reach the client, which cuts missed arraignments and bad Google reviews. Not a marketing touch but a client-service step that improves retention.
Targets are anchored to GavelGrow modelled practice-area benchmarks. If a metric is off-target, the notes column points at the most likely root cause.
$80 mid-market average; $40 top 10% (per our modelled practice-area benchmarks)
If off-targetIf CPL is above $100, audit local SEO budget vs paid Google Ads — many criminal defense firms over-spend on broad keywords when charge-specific terms convert better.
Automatic reply right after the form (and a text after a missed call once US carriers approve your number); under 5 minutes for the live attorney callback
If off-targetAfter-hours speed-to-lead is the highest-leverage metric in criminal defense. GavelGrow's speed-to-lead figure covers all hours, so spot-check the night and weekend leads on your Leads page; if they wait more than 10 minutes, check where your tracking numbers forward at night first.
Track and benchmark against your firm own baseline; uptrend month-over-month is the signal
If off-targetIf after-hours retention is flatlining, the on-call attorney is missing calls or the auto-SMS is reading as automated. Personalize the first sentence with the firm name and a reassuring tone.
Track signed cases by channel on the Performance page and benchmark against your firm's own historical baseline
If off-targetIf conversion is trending down, the issue is usually intake quality, not ad spend. Audit the retainer-quote cadence — many firms wait too long to quote and lose the urgency window.
Aim for full coverage; untracked organic leads make local SEO budget decisions guesswork
If off-targetUntracked organic leads make local SEO budget decisions guesswork. If coverage is not approaching full, check that all charge-specific landing pages have the call tracking number and form embed.
Every signed client's court dates are on the GavelGrow calendar as Court Date events, with the right team members attached
If off-targetReminders go to the team members on each event 7 days, 1 day and 1 hour before, by email and by text once US carriers approve your number; the client is not messaged. A court date that never made it onto the calendar gets no reminder, so audit new cases weekly against the calendar.
Each tracking number forwards to one number, and GavelGrow does not schedule forwarding by day or time today. Point night calls at an answering service or a shared on-call line your firm rotates, or have a staffer change the forwarding number in GavelGrow when the rotation changes. The on-call attorney can open the lead record (charge, jurisdiction, court date) before calling back.
Capture an emergency contact field on the intake form — a family member or friend who is making the inquiry on the arrestee’s behalf. The person who fills in the form is the lead contact, so the automatic reply goes to them, not the in-custody client. Lead record holds both contacts. Most arrest-moment intake is actually filed by family, not the arrestee.
GavelGrow does not have native conflict checks today — that stays in your case management tool or manual process. But the intake form’s co-defendants field surfaces the names you need to check before signing. Build a Days 1-30 SOP: every retainer-ready lead pauses for a 5-minute conflict check against your existing client list before the attorney quotes.
Partly. Tasks have a due date, priority and assignee and can be linked to a case, so add a DMV hearing task the moment a DUI client signs. GavelGrow does not create that task for you or send task reminders, so also put the DMV deadline on the calendar as a court date: the team members on it get reminders 7 days, 1 day and 1 hour before. Critical for DUI practice; do not skip this configuration.
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