Today Is 'Love Your Lawyer Day' -- And It's Completely Stupid

Please don't drag the rest of us into your Sarlacc pit of need.

Ed. note (11/6/2020): Today is this year’s installment of Love Your Lawyer Day so here are our thoughts from 2015 on this issue.

Were you aware of the entirely made-up holiday that is “Love Your Lawyer Day”? Because it’s today. Don’t you feel more loved already?

The brainchild of a legal marketer way back in 2001 and now championed by the American Bar Association Law Practice Council, “Love Your Lawyer Day” is the legal profession’s latest desperate plea for a symbolic hug from a cold and uncaring public.

Get ready for at least one impassioned thinkpiece about how Shakespeare’s “kill all the lawyers” was some sort of compliment!

Per Big Law Business:

Founded in 2001 by Nader Anise, a legal marketer, the group is the driving force behind Love Your Lawyer Day, in which everyone around the world is encouraged to post photos and comments on Twitter, with the hash tag, #LoveYourLawyerDay, professing their deep love for lawyers.

Already, the hash tag is being used by various bar associations, lawyers and legal journalists.

“The reality is that lawyers are, for the most part, vilified in our society,” said Anise. “This day is about recognizing them, appreciating them and thanking them.”

Are you kidding me? A holiday to appreciate people created and promoted by those same people. If you’re this desperate for validation, you’ve got deeper issues than “being a lawyer.” Please don’t drag the rest of us into your Sarlacc pit of need.

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Now before all those hardened screamers out there who fancy themselves above all this feelgoodism begin applauding, screw you too. Not only is the whole “attorneys as mean-spirited, selfish pricks” persona exactly the kind of childish jackassery that erodes public respect for the profession, but it’s also why we have to listen to so many bad jokes and arthouse whining. We get it, curmudgeons: you’re special snowflakes who nobody respects, so who needs ’em anyway! If there’s any justice, these lawyers will be relegated to the Ninth Circle where they can yell “Objection!” repeatedly while they helplessly watch The Beast devour their clients for all eternity.

But as much as the profession needs the jerks like a hole in the head, lawyers also don’t need some Kumbaya drum circle of a holiday to celebrate how f**king lovable they supposedly are. At their most full of themselves, lawyers will gladly tell anyone they meet that attorneys shape and protect civil society. Is that important? Yeah. Do lawyers need to be celebrated for it? No. It’s the damn job. Not to get all Colonel Jessup, but after lawyers allow the public to sleep under the blanket of the very freedom they provide — we don’t need “love” — we’d prefer you just said thank you and went on your way.

If society really wants to honor its Lawyer-Americans, how about some actual relief for students taking on historic levels of debt under a broken model of legal education? Or an influx of cash for the public defenders and Legal Aid lawyers on the front lines defending the indigent? The bulk of the profession will take your appreciation in cash instead of a dumb holiday.

So stuff your platitudes — lawyers have work to do.

A Day for Spreading Love to Lawyers Everywhere [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

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Earlier: Lawyer Asks Teacher What He Makes And Had To Listen To Some Dumb Poem