Peter R. Jarvis

Peter Jarvis is Of Counsel in Holland & Knight's Portland office, where he practices primarily in the area of attorney professional responsibility and risk management. Mr. Jarvis advises lawyers, law firms, corporate legal departments and government legal departments about all aspects of the law governing lawyers. This includes, but is not limited to, matters relating to conflicts of interest, duties of confidentiality, other legal or professional ethics issues, advice on the avoidance of civil or criminal liability, law firm breakups, and questions relating to law firm or legal department structure and operation. Mr. Jarvis also serves as an expert witness and is an avid lecturer for public and private/in-house continuing legal education seminars. He has written numerous publications and is a co-author of The Law of Lawyering (4th Ed. 2015), one of the country's leading professional responsibility treatises. 

Mr. Jarvis has decades of experience as a trusted adviser to lawyers and also draws on his substantial background as a civil litigation attorney in matters involving antitrust, appellate, business tort, general contract, insurance, product liability, tax and Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) concerns. He is a past president of the national Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL) and is a regular speaker both at APRL events and at the American Bar Association's (ABA) National Conference on Professional Responsibility. 

In 2019, the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility honored Mr. Jarvis with its prestigious Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award. This award is given annually to one individual whose career commitment in areas such as legal ethics, disciplinary enforcement and lawyer professionalism demonstrates the best accomplishment of lawyers. It is Peter's second award from the ABA.

Prior to joining Holland & Knight, Mr. Jarvis was the partner-in-charge of the Portland office of a multistate law firm and was co-leader of that firm's national professional responsibility/risk management practice group. He also served for many years as the in-house ethics counsel for a multistate law firm. Mr. Jarvis was honored to contribute an article, "Geoff Hazard: My Views as a Law Student, Mentee and Coauthor," in the Hastings Law Journal tribute to former Yale Law School Professor Geoff Hazard.