Amy B. Hanegan has been a communication consultant since 1976. As president of her own communications training firm in New York City, she provided training programs which rendered techniques for enhancing public speaking skills, corporate presentations and selling skills.
With Fortune 500 clients such as Exxon Corporation and Chase Manhattan Bank, she developed expertise in improving individual communication skills which she continues to do today.
After ten years in the training and development field, Amy Hanegan turned her attention to trial consulting. She was recruited by Litigation Sciences, the pre-eminent litigation consulting firm in the country in 1987.
After moving with her family to the Northwest, she became a consultant with Tsongas Associates. Through her ongoing work with Williams, Kastner & Gibbs, Ms. Hanegan was asked to join the firm in 1993 and became one of only a handful of consultants to work within a law firm; providing communication and litigation consulting services to in-house counsel as well as the Washington legal community. In 1997, after establishing a strong presence in the state, Ms. Hanegan established Better Witnesses, Inc., which today is named Better Witnesses Trial Consulting Services, a full service litigation consulting firm.
Her trial consulting practice assists attorneys in:
- Developing trial strategy
- Preparing witnesses for deposition and trial
- Conducting jury research
- Designing visual aids
- Providing voir dire and jury selection services
- Enhancing opening and closing arguments through the use of effective communication techniques.
Ms. Hanegan has extensive experience in Medical Malpractice and Employment cases.
Ms. Hanegan is an active member and past board member of the American Society of Trial Consultants. She is often invited to be a guest speaker and/or provide continuing legal or medical education. Some of the groups to whom she has spoken are the National Trial Academy, Washington State Office of the Attorney General, the Civil Division of the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, the Washington Defense Trial Lawyers, the National Business Institute, and the bar associations of Oregon and British Columbia. Ms. Hanegan has appeared on the television program “Town Meeting” with Ken Schram and has written for the American Bar Association.
Ms. Hanegan was an adjunct professor of Speech Communication at Cornell University while consulting in New York and holds an M.S. in Speech Communication from Emerson College in Boston. (PR)