Lawyer awards deserve a skeptical reader, and this page assumes you are one. Every honor below is real — but honors are not all alike, and pretending otherwise would cut against the premise of this entire site, which is that you should be able to check what a lawyer claims. So before the plaques: a short, honest guide to what attorney recognitions actually measure.
How to Read Attorney Awards — Honestly
Legal recognitions fall into a few distinct families, and knowing which is which tells you how much weight to give each one.
Peer-reviewed ratings are the oldest and hardest currency. Here, other lawyers and judges — the people who watch an attorney work, negotiate against them, and read their filings — evaluate legal ability and ethics. The AV Preeminent® rating at the bottom of this page is the classic example: it has existed for over a century, it is earned through confidential peer review, and it cannot be purchased. When lawyers themselves rank a colleague at the top of the scale, that is information advertising cannot manufacture.
Client-driven honors measure something different and equally important: what it was like to be represented. Avvo’s Client’s Choice Award is built from reviews written by actual clients — the same reviews, in my case, that are published on this site in full, unedited, with dates.
Community-voted awards put the question to the public. Best of Omaha is decided by Omaha Magazine’s readers — thousands of ballots from the community a firm actually serves. I was named a Best of Omaha winner for personal injury two years running — in 2025 under the Personal Injury Lawyer category, naming me personally, and in 2026 with my firm, High & Younes, LLC, under Personal Injury Law Firm — and I value that one differently than the professional honors: it is my neighbors’ verdict, not my profession’s.
Selection and invitation honors — the “Top 40 Under 40” and “10 Best” families — occupy a middle ground the profession debates, and I will be straight with you about it: these organizations vary in rigor, some blend genuine vetting with marketing, and no honest lawyer pretends a plaque from one equals a peer-review rating. I list mine because they were awarded and because hiding them would be its own kind of spin — but I would never ask you to hire me because of them. The evidence I actually stake this practice on is forty-two published case results and forty-one verified client reviews, every one of which you can check.
The Recognitions
Best of Omaha — Personal Injury
Lifetime Achievement Recipient
Super Lawyers Rising Star
Top 10 Personal Injury Attorney
10 Best Attorneys – High Verdicts & Settlements
10 Best Attorneys – Client Satisfaction (Nebraska)
Top 40 Under 40
Top 100 — Civil Plaintiff
Top 40 Under 40
Top 10 Attorneys Under 40
Top 10 Attorneys Under 40
Lawyers of Distinction — Charter Member
Distinguished Lawyer of America
Elite Lawyer Award · 2020–2026
Client's Choice Award
AV Preeminent® Rating
Credentials That Matter More Than Awards
Licensed and practicing in Nebraska since 2011 and admitted in Iowa, with admissions to the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska and the Southern District of Iowa. Juris Doctor from Creighton University School of Law. Member of the Nebraska Association of Trial Attorneys, the American Association for Justice, the American Bar Association, and the Nebraska and Omaha Bar Associations. More than $23,000,000 recovered for injured clients, and a practice that represents injured people only — never insurance companies.
The Three I Would Point You To First
If you read only part of this page, weigh these. The AV Preeminent® rating, because it is a century-old peer-review instrument in which lawyers and judges rate both legal ability and ethical standards — the profession grading its own, with nothing to sell. The Best of Omaha vote, because it is two consecutive years of this community putting me and my firm on its personal-injury winners list, in a category where every firm campaigns hard. And the Super Lawyers Rising Star selections, because seven consecutive annual selections (2015–2021) through peer nomination and independent research is a pattern, and patterns are harder to fake than moments.
What none of these measure — what no award measures — is whether I will return your calls, prepare your case as if a jury will hear it, and get the number your injury actually justifies. For that, the better evidence has always been the results, the reviews, the endorsements from opposing counsel, and the reporting that has quoted this practice — all published here precisely so the awards never have to carry the argument alone.
Your Attorney
Frank Younes
Every page on this site is written by Frank Younes, a Nebraska trial attorney with a published record of verdicts and settlements, selection to the National Trial Lawyers Top 100, and a practice that covers every county in Nebraska and Iowa. No case is handed to an associate — the lawyer you read here is the lawyer who works your case.
More about Frank → · Free consultation: (402) 378-9208
Frequently Asked Questions
Are lawyer awards legitimate?
Some entirely, some partially. Peer-review ratings and client-driven honors measure real things through real processes; community votes measure reputation where the lawyer practices; some invitation honors blend vetting with marketing. This page tells you which family each honor belongs to rather than presenting them as equivalent.
What is the AV Preeminent rating?
The highest peer-review rating in the Martindale-Hubbell system, earned when other attorneys and members of the judiciary rate a lawyer at the top of the scale for legal ability and ethical standards through confidential review. It has been the profession’s internal reference for over a century.
Who decides Best of Omaha?
Omaha Magazine’s readers, by ballot. Frank was named a Best of Omaha winner for personal injury by community vote in both 2025 (Personal Injury Lawyer) and 2026 (Personal Injury Law Firm, with High & Younes, LLC).
Why list awards at all if results matter more?
Because they were earned and because omitting them would be its own distortion. But this site’s premise is verifiability — which is why every award sits one click from the published results, dated reviews and press coverage that let you check the substance behind the wall of plaques.
Can I verify these independently?
Yes — and you should. The Avvo and Martindale-Hubbell listings are public profiles, Super Lawyers selections are published, Best of Omaha winners are printed by Omaha Magazine, and this site’s reviews and results pages exist so that checking is easy.
Work With Frank — (402) 378-9208