Client
Frank J. Himel is a criminal defense attorney and business owner operating in Chicago, Illinois. Voted one of the top 10 criminal defense attorneys in Chicago, he runs the practice himself, the way many solo and small-firm owners do.
His schedule includes extensive case preparation, court attendance, investigations and interviews with witnesses. That left limited time for answering phone calls and qualifying cases, and potential clients (and revenue) were slipping away with the calls he could not take.
For a solo owner, criminal defense makes the phone itself especially unforgiving. The person calling has often just been arrested, or is a family member calling on their behalf, and few of them leave a voicemail: when nobody answers, they dial the next attorney on the list.
The Challenge
“I received a lot of calls and couldn’t get back to everyone. I have limited time for returning phone calls and needed help prioritizing who to call back.”
Due to time constraints, The Law Offices of Frank J. Himel could not promptly return calls from all potential clients, resulting in lost cases. The practice needed three things fixed:
- Inefficient call answering
- Difficulty prioritizing calls and potential cases
- Lost clients and revenue due to missed calls
Like many solo owners, Himel is the firm’s rainmaker, counsel and manager at once, so every unanswered call was a decision made by default: whoever reached voicemail decided for him whether the case was worth pursuing. He needed the screening to happen before the calls reached him, not after.
He compared Abby with other receptionist services and chose Abby, impressed by the friendliness and professionalism of the team.
The Solution
The Law Offices of Frank J. Himel now benefit from a fully integrated team of live, U.S.-based human receptionists supported by advanced technology. With Abby’s call answering, routing, tracking, reporting and custom call handling instructions, every call is screened and prioritized before it ever reaches the attorney, the core of what Abby’s legal answering service does for busy firms.
Onboarding captured his greeting, his qualifying questions and his transfer rules as detailed call handling instructions, so every receptionist answers exactly the way his own front desk would. After each call, a summary reaches him by text, email and the AbbyGO app within seconds, with transcripts and recordings available whenever he needs a caller’s exact words. Coverage runs 24/7 with no after-hours or weekend upcharge, and bilingual English/Spanish answering is included on every plan.
Frank J. Himel’s favorite features:
- Call summaries, transcripts and recordings after every call
- Detailed call handling instructions, so the receptionists qualify callers his way
- 24/7 call answering and screening
- Text and calling available through the AbbyGO app
The Results
Instead of a stack of voicemails, the practice gets a prioritized queue: Abby flags which calls have promise or urgency, and those get returned first. The phone no longer decides his schedule; casework fills the day, and the callback list is sorted by what the calls are actually worth to the practice.
Upon enlisting Abby’s services, calls are now efficiently screened and prioritized: the receptionists qualify each caller against his criteria, urgent matters are routed to him, and everything else waits its turn in a queue he can trust. Between hearings he works that queue through the AbbyGO app, returning the calls that matter from wherever the day puts him. None of it required new office process: the receptionists follow his instructions, and he reads the results.
In Their Words
“As a business owner, getting back to people that are a good fit for my legal practice is paramount.”
“I can now prioritize the return of calls. Abby tells me which calls have promise or urgency and I get to those things first.”
For a defense practice, the measure of an answering service is not how many calls it takes but which ones reach the attorney, and that is a matter of trust as much as time. What will your Abby success story look like? Every plan starts with a free trial and no setup fee.
