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A law school class drew Peter Jarvis to the area of legal ethics, professional responsibility and risk management for attorneys. Since then, as he puts it, 鈥淢ost of my time is spent either getting or keeping lawyers out of trouble.鈥�

Jarvis, partner in charge at Hinshaw & Culbertson鈥檚 Portland office, recently received a 2012 Distinguished Legal Writing Award from the Burton Awards for Legal Achievement. His article, 鈥淐ivility: The Ultimate Legal Weapon,鈥� was published by Bloomberg Finance LP, and Jarvis was one of 35 authors honored during a June event held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

A 1976 graduate of Yale Law School, Jarvis shares with Briefly Legal how his passion for writing and legal ethics brought him to center stage nationally. His responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Briefly Legal: What led you to write about this particular issue?

Jarvis: There has been, and continues to be, a lot of commentary by lawyers, academics and judges about the need for greater civility as an end in itself. But in my experience, civility is often underappreciated as not simply a morally appropriate thing to do, but also the tactically best thing to do. So I wanted to raise that point with a larger audience in the hope of kicking off a dialogue about how and why civility as an approach is often clearly better than scorched-earth tactics.

BL: What do you enjoy most about your work?

Jarvis: It鈥檚 a chance to help people – mostly lawyers but sometimes clients who have problems with lawyers – and to resolve intellectually challenging issues.

BL: Do you recall a particular anecdote that illustrates bad behavior in the profession?

Jarvis: I鈥檇 rather share an anecdote that proves my point. I had a client on an out-of-state case, and the client told me in no uncertain times that they wanted me to be as aggressive as possible. Instead of just being that way and potentially getting the lawyer on the other side of the case upset, I called him up at the beginning and said, 鈥業 just want you to know that it鈥檚 nothing personal, but my client has requested that I be as aggressive as I can within the rules.鈥� About six months later, when my client decided they didn鈥檛 like litigation so much and wanted to settle, I think the fact that I had a cordial understanding with opposing counsel made the settlement possible. And I don鈥檛 think I gave up anything on my client鈥檚 behalf by telling the other attorney about it because he would have figured it out anyway.