Bullshit and the Tribal Client

38 Pages Posted: 6 Feb 2014 Last revised: 8 Mar 2016

Date Written: February 3, 2014

Abstract

While it is well established that lawyers may not lie to their clients, it is not well established whether counsel can bullshit their potential and active clients. I do not mean bullshit as a term of abuse, but rather as philosopher Harry Frankfurt meant it. Frankfurt identified politicians and public relations professionals as examples of modern day bullshitters. Politicians and PR professionals care only about reaching their goals, and while that may include telling lies, it definitely includes making statements that no one can possibly know is true or not. All that matters is the outcome. Lawyers are bullshitters, too. And lawyers utilize bullshit for the same reason politicians do – to persuade someone to select them. Politicians want a vote; lawyers want a client. In American Indian law and policy, lawyers are not the only bullshitters – elected tribal officials are politicians, too, and many of them are bullshitters as well.

While there is a lot of bullshit going around, I am mostly (but not entirely) concerned about bullshit from outside counsel, often specialized counsel, directed at tribal clients. This paper is intended to identify areas where counsel employs bullshit when dealing with tribal clients. By counsel I mean both outside counsel and in-house counsel, and by clients I include both in-house counsel and tribal leadership. The relationship between in-house counsel and most, if not quite all, tribal government clients renders tribal clients uniquely vulnerable to bullshit by outside counsel. I offer suggestions, mostly for the benefit of in-house counsel, on how to deal with bullshit from both outside counsel and tribal officials. However, I will be the first to acknowledge that in-house may be placed in a no-win scenario, especially once appellate specialists take control of a case involving tribal interests.

Keywords: bullshit, Harry Frankfurt, legal ethics, legal philosophy, Supreme Court bar, Indian tribes, in-house counsel, tribal attorneys

Suggested Citation

Fletcher, Matthew L. M., Bullshit and the Tribal Client (February 3, 2014). 2015 Michigan State Law Review 1435, MSU Legal Studies Research Paper No. 11-27, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2390246

Matthew L. M. Fletcher (Contact Author)

University of Michigan Law School ( email )

500 S. State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://michigan.law.umich.edu/faculty-and-scholarship/our-faculty/matthew-lm-fletcher

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