Poor amplification at distance

[landman]

My Oticons Epochs are great for normal conversations and environments, but I often have to participate in public hearings of planning appeals where the Planning Inspector is seated 10-12 feet to my left, the opposing advocate is directly ahead of me and up to 20 feet away, and the witness giving evidence is seated centrally between the two of us.
This creates inordinately difficult problems for me. I can usually hear the witnesses just fine, but often can hear only 3 out of 5 words the Inspector is uttering and very frequently cannot hear the opposing advocate 20 feet away at all ! (This is worse if she is a woman as they tend to speak quietly anyway.)
What I feel I need is a device that I can point to the individual who is speaking and it will then significantly amplify the speech directly into my HAs.
Do you have any device that offers a solution to this problem, please ?

[PhonakExpert]

Hi Landman,

Sad to hear about the problems you're having with your hearing aids.  The fortunate thing about your hearing aids is that it has the capacity for an FM shoe at the bottom.  You can get an FM microphone which when pointed towards a certain direction will pick up sounds much better.  Alternatively you can place the mic near the judge for example and hear the people around him/her.

I can't think of anything else that will help apart from further adjustments or to look at different hearing aids  (as a last resort).