Kathy S. Wengel

KATHY S. WENGEL, an Associate with the Firm, specializes in the defense and trial of civil litigation and insurance coverage matters. Ms. Wengel has nearly forty years of litigation experience beginning in 1977 when Ms. Wengel became a Public Defender for Cook County where she worked in Appeals, the Municipal Branch Courts and the Felony Trial Division at 26th and California. Ms. Wengel then became Assistant Corporation Counsel in 1985, in the Torts Division, handling Law Division trials and motion practice. She subsequently became the Associate General Counsel for the Chicago Housing Authority’s Torts Division practicing in State and Federal Court. Ms. Wengel returned to the City’s Corporate Counsel’s Office as the City’s Insurance Coverage Attorney, working with diverse divisions of the Legal Department, Benefits, Risk Management, the Health Department, the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs and the Department of Administrative Hearings.

Ms. Wengel has delivered several MCLE accredited lectures to Corporation Counsel and Park District attorneys on insurance law. She also served as a lecturer in the University of Illinois English Department for seven years, teaching a rhetoric class titled, “The Art of Legal Argument.” In addition to her career achievements, Ms. Wengel also studied voice at the Chicago Conservatory for ten years, sang with a female Polish Group, Lira, and was a member of Bank I’s Gospel Choir.

Ms. Wengel received her B.A. in English in 1972 from the University of Illinois Chicago with Honors and Departmental Distinction. She received her Juris Doctorate from DePaul University Law School in 1975. Ms. Wengel is licensed in the State of Illinois and in the Northern District of Illinois.

Ms. Wengel has taken 27 twenty-seven jury trials to verdict and the following Appellate Decisions arose out of her motion practice.