Money may determine what happens next. Suppose you do not qualify for representation through the State Public Defender or for court-appointed counsel. If you want an attorney, you will have to hire one yourself. That is what this article is about.

 

      You begin by searching online for a criminal defense attorney in your area. For local search results, factors such as relevance, distance, and prominence can affect which lawyers appear near the top. Relevance concerns how closely a lawyer's website and online business profile match what you searched for. Distance concerns how close the lawyer is to the location associated with the search. Prominence reflects how established or visible the firm appears online, including such things as links, reviews, and other information about the business.

 

      Search engines may also favor webpages that provide useful, specific information about particular areas of criminal law rather than generic statements about legal services. A page explaining an attorney's practice, experience, and the types of cases handled may therefore be more useful to both the search engine and the person conducting the search than a page that merely announces that the lawyer belongs to some “Top 100” list.

 

      Other factors operate behind the scenes. A website's structure, content, keywords, links, and technical performance can affect how easily a search engine understands and displays it. Paid advertisements are different: advertisers can pay to have sponsored results displayed prominently.

 

      It may be tempting to assume that the best lawyer will appear first. A successful lawyer may have good reviews, a polished website, and enough revenue to invest heavily in advertising. But search engines do not directly measure courtroom performance. A lawyer's position in a Google search is not a statistical measure of that lawyer's ability to obtain dismissals, favorable plea agreements, probation, or shorter sentences.

 

      What we would really like is an objective benchmark for comparing one criminal defense attorney with another.

 

      That is not easy.

 

      An attorney might advertise that he or she wins every trial without mentioning that only unusually strong cases are taken to trial. Another attorney might obtain a dismissal before trial, saving the client the expense and risk of trying the case. Even sentencing outcomes are difficult to compare. A defendant with several prior felony convictions, previous revocations, and aggravating facts is not similarly situated to a first-time offender charged with the same offense. Common sense suggests that their sentences may be very different even if both lawyers performed equally well.

 

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