Investigator Meetup: What kinds of training would we like?

Amber Kaset is widely recognized for her leadership in criminal defense investigations and investigator training, with more than 20 years of experience as a private investigator and mitigation specialist. She founded AK Investigations in 2010 after seven years at the Metropolitan Public Defender in Nashville, where she worked as a criminal defense investigator and interpreter.

Throughout her career, Amber has worked on more than 1,000 cases spanning a broad spectrum of criminal and civil matters. Her experience includes serious felony cases across a wide range of offenses, including sex crimes, homicides, and federal prosecutions, with work at both the trial and post-conviction levels in capital and non-capital cases. She has participated in numerous death penalty cases across multiple states, including cases involving foreign nationals from Latin America, and partners with the Mexican Capital Legal Assistance Program (MCLAP), local innocence organizations, the National Innocence Project, public defender offices, and private defense attorneys to support clients facing the most serious charges.

What began as a one-woman practice has grown under Amber’s leadership into a multi-investigator firm with diverse skills and specialties. In addition to casework, Amber provides investigative services, training, and consulting nationwide, helping defense teams and investigators strengthen case development and elevate investigative standards. She regularly teaches and presents at national conferences and trainings for investigators, attorneys, paralegals, and defense teams, and has taught investigative practice to law students and other audiences at universities including Vanderbilt University and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is known for delivering thoughtful, high-quality, defense-centered support tailored to the unique needs of each case.

Amber is the founder of AK Investigations and the creator of The Investigative Expert Method, an online training platform for criminal defense investigators and other members of the defense team.

For more information, visitwww.akinvestigations.com andwww.investigativeexpertmethod.com.

JONATHAN “Jon” LYON is currently the Investigator Resource Coordinator, past Member Support Coordinator and the national survey investigator for National Association for Public Defense. Since the pandemic he has led roughly 200 meetups for investigators both nationally and internationally. Jon is the president of Lyon Legal Logistics to help attorneys in and out of court with Discovery and technology and has assisted attorneys in multiple federal court jurisdictions (www.lyonlegallogistics.com/).

He is also a legal investigator for McClain Investigations. Jon began his investigative background working in a PI firm and then for 12 years for the Office of the State Appellate Defender of Illinois. His primary focus has been on post-conviction death penalty cases. In addition, Jon worked for LexisNexis as an award-winning national trainer of the Case Map suite of software. He also worked for Lockheed Martin as a contractor supporting government attorneys and investigators with software and electronic discovery support needs. He is a Certified Defense Investigator through DePaul’s Center for Justice in Capital Cases and a Certified Trainer through the Bureau of Justice Assistance. He has taught at the Clarence Darrow Death Penalty Defense College, Cardoza, DePaul, Kent, Iowa, and University of Michigan law schools.

He has also taught at the National Defense Investigator Associations Annual Conferences, National Association of Legal Investigators annual conference, National Association for Public Defense, The Innocence Project, NACDL, Federal Defender’s winning strategies conferences, Life in the Balance, American Society of Criminology, US Army, Intellenet and numerous state and county public defender conferences. It is not unheard of for Jon to be invited back to conferences. Jon was most recently interviewed on “Public Defenseless” episode #99. Jon is the Creator/Webmaster for the internationally utilized website www.internetsleuth.net.