Every missed call could be a missed client.

No. You keep your existing number and forward it to your dedicated Houji line. Callers dial the same number they always have — Houji answers on your behalf. Nothing on your website, cards, or listings changes.

You can get Houji up and running in about 20 minutes. The setup assistant asks about your practice, pricing, hours, and preferences, and if you provide your website, Houji can pre-fill much of that information for you. You review everything before going live.

That gives Houji a strong starting point. From there, you can make her increasingly useful by adding the questions your callers actually ask, refining how she explains your fees and services, and giving her more detailed instructions for different types of calls. Like training a good receptionist, the more she knows about how your firm works, the better she can represent it — except the instructions you give Houji remain in place until you decide to change them.

Yes — your practice areas, consultation and fee structure, scheduling links, intake process, office details, and the answers to your most common questions. Firms with multiple offices can configure each location's own hours, address, and phone, and Houji answers location questions correctly per office. You can refine her knowledge any time from the dashboard, every change is saved as a version, and you can roll back with one click.

Yes. You can rename your assistant, write your own business-hours and after-hours greetings, adjust how she answers calls, and choose a voice for each language you use. That means, for example, your Spanish-speaking callers can hear a voice selected specifically for Spanish rather than the same default voice used for every language.

You can also create a custom voice from an authorized voice sample. Once created, that voice is available for your firm's Houji assistant rather than being offered as a general voice option to other customers.

Answers immediately, 24/7 — never voicemail. She identifies who's calling (new client, existing client, opposing counsel, or a court/official call) and handles each the right way. Messages capture the caller's full name, phone number, and a clear summary of why they called — delivered by email the moment the call ends. If a caller hangs up before confirming, the message still goes out, marked so you know to read it with that in mind. Text notifications are coming soon.

Yes, but you control how much familiarity she shows.

By default, Houji does not assume that a phone number belongs to a particular person. A family, business, or shared line may have more than one caller, so she waits until the caller identifies themselves before using matching information from prior calls.

You can make that behavior more or less familiar: have every call begin fresh, recognize someone only after they identify themselves, or use a known caller's name more proactively. You can also create your own follow-up questions for returning callers, such as asking whether they are calling about a previous matter with the firm.

The important safeguard is that Houji does not disclose a person's matter or prior conversation merely because a call came from a familiar number.

Houji tells callers the office is closed, takes a complete message, and flags genuine emergencies for immediate attention — without waking you for every routine call. You define what counts as an emergency.

You set the triggers — a call from a court or clerk's office, an imminent filing deadline, or situations you define — and Houji alerts the right people immediately when one fires. On Pro and Enterprise plans, genuine emergencies can be routed live to your team.

Yes, when you turn transfers on. Callers can be connected to your office line. On Pro and Enterprise plans, calls can also be transferred to specific attorneys by name — up to 5 attorneys on Pro, with no attorney limit on Enterprise. Each person sets their own transfer hours and preference — take live calls or messages only — and Houji sets caller expectations using each person's own callback policy rather than over-promising on anyone's behalf. With warm transfer on, you hear a private whisper first — who's calling and about what — and accept or decline before you're connected, while the caller just hears ringing.

Yes. Each member of your firm can have a member sign-in — a simplified page with their own contact card, the calls and messages that involve them, and (if you allow it) the languages on your interpreter lines. You decide per person who can sign in and whether they see all calls or only their own. The full dashboard stays behind your firm login.

The caller is never dumped to voicemail. Houji rejoins the call with full context — "Sorry about that, Jane didn't pick up. You mentioned the contract — should I take a message, or try the main line?" — and finishes the job. That works on every transfer, including urgent routing.

Absolutely. Houji can work as an overflow receptionist rather than replacing the person you already have.

Turn on Ring your office first under Configuration → Call handling, choose how long your office should ring, and Houji answers only if nobody picks up. That makes her useful for lunch breaks, busy periods, court days, evenings, and any other time your staff cannot get to the phone.

If your existing phone system already forwards unanswered calls, you can also simply forward those calls to your Houji number.

Houji notes opposing parties mentioned in calls, and if a new caller's name matches a stored adverse party, you get an early heads-up email to review before booking. It's a heads-up, not clearance — always run your own conflict check — but it surfaces the connection before the consultation is on your calendar, not after.

Update her knowledge any time from your dashboard — just type what you want changed. Every update is versioned, so you can always roll back. Houji also analyzes your call log weekly and suggests fixes for gaps automatically: questions callers asked that she couldn't answer, recurring confusion, missed opportunities. Accepting a suggestion takes one click. And your configuration never changes behind your back — website re-syncs run only when you click Re-scan, and you review what changed before it applies.

Houji speaks 25 languages — English, Spanish, Mandarin, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Hindi, Russian, Korean, Vietnamese, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, Polish, Ukrainian, Tamil, Bengali, Tagalog, Indonesian, Romanian, and Greek — and detects the caller's language automatically, switching mid-conversation with no trigger phrase. Solo includes English plus 1 bonus language; Pro includes English plus 3, with more at $20/month each; Enterprise includes all 25. On every plan, up to 3 languages besides English can be active at once — a limit of the real-time voice pipeline itself.

Yes. You can change your active languages from the dashboard as your client base changes.

A language you add becomes available immediately. If you remove one, Houji continues supporting it through the end of the current billing cycle, so you do not lose something you have already paid for. Your dashboard shows when the change will take effect, and you can reverse it before then.

Once the billing cycle ends, that language slot becomes available for another language within your plan's allowance.

The live interpretation line is a separate Houji service for conversations where two people need to speak different languages on the same call — for example, an English-speaking attorney talking with a Spanish-speaking client.

Houji provides AI interpretation in real time so each person can speak naturally in their own language. It can be purchased on its own or added to a receptionist plan, starting at $49 per month.

It is AI interpretation, not a human interpreter. It should not be used as a substitute where a court, agency, professional rule, or other circumstance requires a qualified human interpreter.

Houji is designed to keep unwanted calls from taking over your phone line.

It distinguishes between recorded robocalls and live solicitations, and you can decide how each should be handled. Robocalls can be ended immediately or politely deflected. Live solicitors can be turned away, disconnected, or asked to leave a short message — useful when you do not want your receptionist spending several minutes on a sales pitch but also do not want to automatically reject every unfamiliar caller.

Houji identifies these calls separately in your call log as Spam-robocall or Solicitation, so you can see what happened without listening to the call.

For additional protection, you can enable call screening, which requires a caller to press a key before the conversation begins and filters out most automated dialing systems.

Houji's spam detection can also be updated as new calling patterns are identified across the service.

Solo and Pro start with a 7-day free trial. You'll receive an email before your trial ends; if you continue, your card is charged for the plan you selected on day 8. Cancel any time before then from your dashboard and you won't be charged. Enterprise plans skip the trial and are active immediately.

All three, from your dashboard, with no phone calls. Plan changes show you the exact prorated amount before you confirm. Taking a break? Pause for 30, 60, or 90 days at $5/month — your number and configuration stay reserved. Cancel any time.

Nothing dramatic. Overage is billed at $0.15 per minute past your plan (Solo 500, Pro 1,500, Enterprise unlimited) and appears on your next invoice — never a surprise charge mid-month.

Yes. Add notification recipient seats at $10/month each (Solo up to 4 people total; Pro and Enterprise as many as you need). Pro and Enterprise firms can also add extra phone lines at $49/month per line — for a second office, or a dedicated language line: a caller who switches languages mid-call is moved across seamlessly, conversation intact.

Houji is a receptionist service, not an attorney-client communication channel. Elise always identifies herself as a virtual assistant, never claims to be human, never gives legal advice, and never implies that an attorney-client relationship has been formed — guardrails built into every configuration, designed with professional responsibility requirements in mind.

Call transcripts are stored on encrypted infrastructure, are never sold, and are never used to train AI models. You control retention: keep transcripts indefinitely (the default) or auto-delete after 30, 90, or 365 days — and you can permanently delete all call data yourself at any time from Account & Billing. Call data is removed from our active systems within 30 days if you cancel. Full details in our Privacy Policy.

It's built for law firms, on purpose. Houji was developed hand-in-hand with a practicing attorney, and it's answering calls for working law practices every day. It speaks in practice areas, consultations, conflicts, and intake — not generic message-taking — and every detail, from how it screens potential clients to how it words fees, comes from how a law office actually runs.

Houji is built around your firm's instructions — and around the way a law practice actually receives calls.

You tell Houji what your firm handles, how consultations work, what callers should know about your fees, what counts as urgent, what should happen after hours, and how different kinds of callers should be treated. Houji then uses those instructions consistently on every call. You can change them whenever your practice changes.

Just as importantly, Houji was designed to recognize the differences that matter in a professional office. A new client, an existing client, opposing counsel, a court clerk, a solicitor, and someone calling about an urgent problem should not all go through the same script. Houji identifies the type of call and handles it according to the rules you have given her.

That comes with flat monthly pricing rather than traditional per-minute answering-service charges, no setup fee, support for 25 languages, and an optional AI interpretation line for real-time bilingual conversations.