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Amanda Penick weighs her words.

Amanda is the third of four in her family. Her mother is an operating room nurse at Christ Hospital. She also oversees the food pantry at Holy Family Church in Price Hill and was Amanda’s Girl Scout troop leader.

"She still mends our clothing. If I have a button missing, she notices it before I do and stitches it back on." From her mother’s giving example, Amanda recognizes she leads a fortunate life, one she does not take for granted, one that requires her to give back.

On the evenings when Amanda’s mom was working, her father would read stories from the Bible or Mark Twain to the kids. If they weren’t good that day, their punishment would be no stories that night. So the kids were almost always good. She credits her father with her love of reading and wordplay.

"Words should never be taken lightly," she says. "I’m very conscious of how words can be interpreted or misinterpreted. For me, it’s about communication. I put a lot of thought into the words I choose. It goes against my nature to just dash off an email."

Amanda was a tomboy. She didn’t like dresses and spent long summer days in the woods behind her parent’s home. She loved school, particularly spelling and vocabulary lessons.

"It was a big deal when we would come home with a good report card. We’d throw it down –and Mom and Dad would ooh and ahh. They’d take us out to eat or to the Discovery Zone. The way they would react made us try harder – not for the celebration but because it pleased them so much for us to do well."

At St. Ursula Academy, she was editor of the student newspaper. Her major at Hanover College was English. During an internship with an entertainment law firm in Philadelphia her junior year, she connected with Helen Richardson, an attorney whose influence steered Amanda to law school. "She helped me understand how to integrate humanity into the practice of law, that it’s OK to have a sense of humor. She taught me that it’s not about the billable hour. It’s about the relationship."

Amanda enjoys wading through huge amounts of amorphous information, boiling down complex issues to their basic components. "I want to be the kind of attorney people can rely on to explain complex issues fairly, accurately, simply and honestly. If I don’t think the odds for them are good, I want them to know I will be open and honest and give a fair evaluation. Most of all, I want them to know I truly do have their best interests at heart."