On a warm, late July afternoon, Charles “Chip” Becker is in his law office at Kline & Specter, doing what he does every day.

“I’m working on cases,” he says matter-of-factly.

As the partner responsible for the post-trial and appellate practice at Philadelphia’s fabled white-shoe law firm, Becker works with colleagues plotting strategies, analyzing tactics, crafting arguments, and writing cogent briefs. He’s sort of the attorney’s attorney.

“Everything I am doing as a lawyer, most of it, is around legal strategy and legal argument, a lot of it written,” says Becker, who lives in Chestnut Hill with his wife, physician Marta Becker, and their three children. “I’m involved in a lot of people’s lives. I work with all the lawyers in the firm and I work with many lawyers beyond the firm on all kinds of matters.”

His dedication to the law, reputation for collegiality, and work with several prestigious Pennsylvania law-related commissions, played a significant role in Becker being chosen this year’s co-recipient as Pennsylvania Attorney of the Year. He shares the award with John J. Hare, of Marshall Dennehey, also in Philadelphia.

“It was a very lovely thing and to be recognized with John, who is a wonderful lawyer,” Becker says of the award announced by the Legal Intelligencer, the oldest daily law journal in the country.

Aside from their resumes crammed with professional achievements, Becker believes their congeniality as courtroom adversaries was a factor. You see, the two attorneys spent the last year pitted against each other in court appeals involving more than $3.5 billion in verdicts and judgments.

“The folks that nominated us were very kind of moved by the idea that these two people who are, on one hand adversaries and against each other trying to beat each other in the courtroom, but outside of the courtroom we are talking together and very often in very collaborative ways about common problems,” Becker says.

But it’s not like the duo never met before. Becker and Hare co-chair the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s Historical Commission, serve on the Pennsylvania Commission of Judicial Independence, worked together on several rules committees, and co-authored books together.

“We just have a long history of being across from each other in cases and at the same time working together on different committees,” says Becker, an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law. “We have stretches where we have had a lot of cases and whatever we can work out, we work out.”

Growing up in the city’s Frankford section, lawyering was coded into Becker’s DNA. His father was chief judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and his mother was a lawyer, as was his grandfather. After graduating from Williams College and Yale Law School, Becker clerked in the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

While in Boston he met Marta Taylor, a Harvard Medical School student. When she accepted an otolaryngology surgical residency at the University of North Carolina, Becker followed.

“I found myself moving like Good Will Hunting,” he said. “I went to see about a girl.”

Becker passed the North Carolina bar and found work with a firm in need of someone skilled in writing briefs. Becker was a perfect fit since both his Yale training and clerkship in Boston were heavily focused on writing briefs. Unbeknownst to him at the time, he had taken his first steps to becoming an appellate lawyer.

“There is a lot of serendipity in life, including in professional life, including the legal profession,” he says.

Five years later, the Beckers settled in Philadelphia, where he decided to embrace serendipity and identify professionally as an appellate lawyer. Three years later, Kline & Specter, where he once clerked, came calling.

“There was a time when they invited me, or suggested that I return to the firm on the basis of my doing appellate work,” he says. “I did that and I have been here now for almost 19 years. What we have built at Kline & Specter is a very robust first trial and appellate practice that touches on a lot of different subject matters.”

When he is not at his desk “working on cases,” Becker gives presentations to various legal organizations. In his role as vice chair of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s Commission on Judicial Independence, Becker speaks passionately about protecting the independence of the courts. It is, he says, vital to the health of our constitutional system.

“This is a core, foundational principle of our country,” he says. “The health, the integrity, the independence of our judiciary, which is necessary to support the rule of law, is necessary to support the healthy functioning of our constitutional system, and by extension, our way of life.”

Judges at every level of the court system are increasingly under pressure from all sides, he says. Maintaining their ability to render decisions “without fear or favor based on the law and facts” are “part and parcel with the health and integrity” of our constitutional government, he says.

Away from the law, Becker spends his time with his wife of 26 years (whom he lovingly calls “the Great Marta Becker”), and children Issac, Jacob and Naomi. He is working on becoming a better swimmer but aside from walking their standard poodles, Coleman and Claire, in Pastorius Park, Becker has just one really important hobby.

“My most important hobby,” he says, “is being a devoted husband.”