Shrager Defense Attorneys

Criminal defense in Pittsburgh runs on speed and local knowledge, and Shrager Defense Attorneys builds its whole pitch around both. The firm answers phones around the clock, lists a real street address in the Frick Building on Grant Street in downtown Pittsburgh, and has been doing criminal defense work since 1967. That is a long run for any practice, and it has stayed narrow throughout: no family law, no personal injury, just criminal defense and DUI work. For a firm this old and this focused, the public record holds up reasonably well.

Criminal defense across multiple counties

The practice areas cover the full weight of the criminal docket. Shrager Defense Attorneys handles DUI and DWI cases, drug charges, assault and violent offenses, sex crimes, white-collar fraud, theft and robbery, homicide and manslaughter, juvenile matters, federal charges, and traffic violations. That range is wide for a firm this size, which means someone charged with a roadside DUI and someone facing a federal indictment can both find their situation addressed on the same page. The geographic reach is similarly broad: beyond the Allegheny County base, Shrager Defense Attorneys lists coverage across Beaver, Butler, Cambria, Fayette, Indiana, Mercer, and Washington counties. Criminal procedure and local prosecutors vary from county to county, so that kind of explicit regional coverage is a practical detail worth noting.

Six named attorneys with prosecutorial experience

Six lawyers are named individually on the site, which is more than you typically see at a boutique criminal defense firm. David J. Shrager leads the group, alongside Donald I. Shrager, Shelley Duff, Lyle Dresbold, Frankie Exler, and Kevin Chernosky. Chernosky is a former Allegheny County Deputy District Attorney, and prior-prosecutor experience is genuinely useful on the defense side. A lawyer who spent years deciding which cases to charge and how to build them has a different read on county plea negotiations than someone who came up entirely on the defense side.

Recognition from Super Lawyers and National Trial Lawyers

The firm puts combined legal experience across the team at over nine decades. David Shrager holds individual recognition from Super Lawyers as a top-rated Pittsburgh criminal defense attorney, listed since 2022, and a National Trial Lawyers Top 100 placement for 2025. Those are peer-reviewed distinctions that carry more weight than a tagline.

Independent ratings and client reviews

Shrager Defense Attorneys also reports over 400 five-star Google reviews on its own page, and while a self-reported count deserves some caution, the number is corroborated by independent sources: Trustanalytica shows a 4.8-star aggregate, and the Better Business Bureau lists Shrager Defense Attorneys as an accredited business with an A+ rating. BBB accreditation is not automatic, so that designation reflects a real process. There is also an Avvo profile with client reviews and a single five-star employee review on Glassdoor. Across these platforms the picture is consistent, and consistency across independent sources is more convincing than any single number.

24/7 phone availability for emergency cases

This entry in a business directory captures what the public record shows, and the public record is solid. The phone availability extends to two lines, a local Pittsburgh number and a toll-free option, and both sit prominently at the top of the homepage. The 24/7 coverage is the thing that makes this firm credible in a genuine emergency. A criminal arrest does not wait for office hours, and Shrager Defense Attorneys has built its entire intake process around that reality. Being reachable at 2 a.m. on a weekend is a structural commitment, and the firm makes it explicit.

The honest caveats are straightforward. The nine-decades figure and the 400-plus review count come from the firm's own site, so they deserve the same healthy skepticism you would apply to any self-reported metric. The BBB rating, Super Lawyers recognition, National Trial Lawyers placement, and Trustanalytica aggregate are all third-party and independently verifiable, which means the case for Shrager Defense Attorneys does not depend on taking the firm at its word. Strip out everything self-reported and the independent markers still hold up.

What the site does well is specificity. Shrager Defense Attorneys names every attorney individually. Every county is listed. Ten distinct practice areas are spelled out. A real street address is published. There is no vague "experienced team" boilerplate to wade through. Shrager Defense Attorneys gives prospective clients concrete information rather than brochure language, and that specificity is more useful than any number of generic trust signals. A firm that has been doing this one thing since 1967 and still names its attorneys individually is making a particular kind of commitment to accountability. The depth of the public record, especially the independent ratings, gives a reader something real to work with when deciding whether to pick up the phone.