Philip Baker-Shenk
Partner
Holland & Knight LLP
Philip "Phil" Baker-Shenk is a law partner in Holland & Knight's Washington, D.C., office. For the past 33 years Phil has provided legal and policy representation to scores of American Indian and Alaska Native tribal governments and organizations as well as companies doing business with Native communities. Mr. Baker-Shenk regularly appears before courts, federal agencies and tribal governing bodies. He has extensive experience drafting regulations, legislation, constitutions and ordinances as well as negotiating agreements, developing strategic positions and litigating cases on behalf of clients.
Phil was a mere teenager when he first began his work on behalf of Indian Country in Washington, D.C., serving as a college intern at the Friends Committee on National Legislation in 1976, and then as a professional staff member on the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. Years later, he returned to the Committee to serve for two years as majority general counsel to Sen. John McCain, its chairman. During several tours of duty on the Committee staff, totaling a half decade, Phil drafted legislation and committee reports dealing with Indian gaming, housing, economic development, tribal status, land and resource management, environmental protection, taxation, child welfare, education, housing, self-governance and many other issues. Phil was a core member of the legislative drafting teams for the 1988, 1994, 2000, and 2020 amendments to the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, and has played an active role on each of the associated regulation writing teams. He has negotiated more than a hundred contracts, compacts, and funding agreements under that Act, has litigated dozens of cases to secure rights due clients on Tribal Self-Governance and Indian Self-Determination issues, and in recent years negotiated the first major Section 105(l) lease agreements with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Tribal clients call on Phil for advice on policy issues, federal relations, economic development strategies, Indian Self-Determination, and Tribal Self-Governance matters. He has substantial experience in a variety of aspects of the development of federal Indian law, including litigating in federal, state and tribal courts, crafting federal and state legislation, providing legal advice and counsel to tribal governments and their enterprises, negotiating with federal and state administrative agencies, and resolving problems as general counsel for tribal clients. Nothing satisfies him more than when he has secured a goal that helps returns land and sovereignty to his tribal clients and documents his personal reputation for effective advocacy that is worthy of their trust.
