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Article

Abstract

Lawyers are communicators. They communicate with clients, courts, adversaries, juries, witnesses, and the public. Lawyers have a special responsibility for the quality of justice. Their communications, therefore, are hedged by various ethical rules to ensure that their statements are knowledgeable, truthful, respectful, and not prejudicial to the administration of justice. But lawyers are not always knowledgeable of the facts. In fact, they sometimes behave disrespectfully, and stray from the truth. False statements by lawyers may be made unwittingly, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes with an indifference, even a contempt for the truth. Discourse of the latter kind may be characterized as bullshit.

Bullshit is more prevalent in our culture than ever. Expanded forms of electronic communication and the ability of everybody to be an expert on almost everything probably accounts for so much more bullshit. The proliferation of bullshit in our culture generally is also reflected in an increase in bullshit by lawyers. Indeed, the investigation of President Donald Trump by Special Counsel Robert Mueller produced a dizzying array of unusual public statements by his personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani that may be regarded as bullshit. Giuliani's statements invite consideration of the following questions: Do the rules of professional ethics cover attorney bullshit? If so, how much bullshit may a lawyer utter before crossing an ethical line? Assuming the ethics rules apply, are professional disciplinary bodies capable of exposing lawyer bullshit?

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