Marsha Hunter

For decades, Marsha Hunter has been a specialist in legal communication, training attorneys to speak confidently and persuasively in all settings. The author of a series of award-winning, best selling books on persuasive speaking, Hunter’s teaching helps trial lawyers sharpen advocacy skills, and transactional attorneys refine their presentations as they become more articulate, fluent, and eloquent. Her books help lawyers gain an edge in the arts of oral advocacy and public and professional speaking. Hunter’s techniques emphasize how attorneys use their bodies, brains, and voices for effective professional speech. She employs pragmatic and immediately useful techniques for gesturing naturally, thinking clearly, and speaking persuasively. Citing recent developments in the ever-growing area of gesture research, she provides detailed answers to the frequently asked question, “What do I do with my hands?” Research in cognitive science helps lawyers think clearly in voir dire, openings, direct and cross examination, and closing arguments. Grappling with the syntactical challenges of each phase of trial, her books and teaching also include how to eliminate thinking noises such as um, and how to control the pace of speech. For corporate attorneys, Hunter’s techniques teach advanced fundamentals of persuasive public speaking. Her specialty is human factors the science of human performance in high-stakes environments. For more than 30 years, Hunter was the CEO and a founder of Johnson and Hunter, Inc., with legal clients in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe. Her clients were top ten and top twenty law firms, legal departments at the world's largest corporations, the United States Department of Justice, and numerous elite law firms, bar associations, and law societies from Belfast to Tasmania. She wrote for numerous legal publications. Born in Montana and raised in the American West, she lives in New Mexico.