Shawn Wood Published in Chicago Lawyer "Addressing Civility"

Shawn Wood's article, “Addressing Civility,” was published in the July 2008 issue of Chicago Lawyer.

In his article, Shawn discusses his experience attending this year's Allerton Conference, hosted by the Illinois Bar Association.  The topic "Civility Initiatives for Civil Litigation," sparked his interest and he writes about the challenges and solutions associated with heightening the standards of professionalism. One issue highlighted at the conference was "strategic incivility," which is the theory that "most lawyers are not inherently mean-spirited, but are driven to act as such because they believe incivility to be a profitable strategic tactic in litigation." A proposed solution is to make strategic incivility "… unprofitable through a new Illinois Supreme Court Rule, patterned after 28 U.S.C. 1927, sanctioning 'vexatious' conduct." Although prior generations have sought to tackle the issue of restoring civility, Shawn left the conference feeling optimistic that the "current leaders are working harder than ever to do something" about it.